Another blogger found herself embroiled in a lawsuit stemming from an online restaurant review she posted that said a restaurant had used a rusty grill when preparing her food.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday reported that a 28-year-old female blogger, surnamed Hsia (夏), in June 2009 posted a photograph on her blog which apparently showed that a yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurant in Gongguan (公館), Taipei, had used a rusty grill.
The initial entry was followed in May last year with another posting that said the restaurant failed to take responsibility for the problem.
The restaurant rejected the accusation, saying that what might have looked like rust in the photograph was actually barbeque sauce that had not been completely cleaned from the grill. As recourse, the restaurant filed a defamation suit against Hsia.
Hsia, who made a court appearance in April as part of the lawsuit, added a post on her blog saying that she was sued by the yakiniku restaurant because of the incident.
She also wrote in the post that businesses such as these were cockroaches, who “managed to continue to hassle the human world because everyone turns a blind eye to them, allowing the cockroaches to grow fat and become arrogant.”
However, this post resulted in the restaurant leveling another lawsuit against her for public humiliation.
Meanwhile, Banciao District (板橋) prosecutors found that Hsia’s posts about the restaurant, which included photographs as evidence as well as some positive comments about the restaurant’s food, did not constitute defamation.
However, prosecutors found her follow-up post, which referred to the restaurant as a cockroach, to have crossed the line from reasonable discussion or commentary into slander which had caused damage to the restaurant’s reputation.
Therefore, the prosecutors charged Hsia with public humiliation on Friday.
The incident follows the recent case of a blogger who lost a defamation lawsuit to another restaurant that was upset with the blogger’s negative review.
In a separate court ruling by the Greater Taichung branch of Taiwan High Court on Tuesday, the court sentenced a blogger who wrote that a restaurant’s beef noodles were too salty to 30 days in detention and two years of probation, as well as ordering her to pay NT$200,000.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique