Thinking of publishing a bad review online? What to consider first

Online reviews are now the shop window for trades and service businesses, and a single critical post can cost a business significantly. The King’s Bench Division’s decision in Paul Little Construction Ltd v Byrne [2026] is a useful reminder that a Google review may still constitute a defamatory comment.

How are your words interpreted?

The meaning of a review is based on what a reasonable reader would understand from the words used, read in context and without over-elaborate analysis.

In this case, the court found that both reviews went beyond criticism of the particular project carried out for the defendant. Read as a whole, they alleged, among other things, that the claimant should not be trusted with other customers’ building projects.

That is the key issue addressed in the judgment: a review framed around one customer’s experience was read as a wider warning about the business. The court treated that broader allegation as the defendant’s opinion, based on his own experience, rather than as a free-standing factual assertion.

Fact or opinion?

The distinction between fact and opinion depends on how the words would strike the ordinary reader. Opinion is something which is, or can reasonably be inferred to be, a deduction, inference, conclusion, criticism, remark or observation, whereas a fact is something capable of verification. Context and the nature of the publication matter.

The court held that each review contained a mixture of the two. Descriptive criticisms of the workmanship and costs were opinion. These were the sort of views a typical dissatisfied customer would naturally express.

However, assertions that the defendant had incurred corrective costs and that a written promise had not been honoured were statements of fact. The practical consequence is significant: the defence of honest opinion will be available, if at all, only for the parts of the statement that are opinion. The factual allegations will need to be defended on another footing, most obviously the defence of truth under section 2 of the Defamation Act 2013.

Basis of the opinion

The threshold under section 3(3) of the Act is deliberately modest. The statement only needs to indicate, in general or specific terms, the basis of the opinion. It doesn’t need to set out every underlying fact.

The court found that both reviews met this requirement by referring, in general terms, to the defendant’s own dealings with the claimant. A reader could see that the opinions, including the wider view that the claimant should not be trusted with other projects, were grounded in the author’s personal experience as a customer.

That will generally be enough to clear this hurdle in most genuine first-hand reviews.

When is a review defamatory?

At common law, the question is whether the comments accuse the claimant of conduct that goes against the shared values of society and whether they would be likely to make reasonable people think or behave significantly less favourably towards the claimant.

The court held that both reviews, in the meanings found, crossed that threshold. Notably, it rejected the idea that the threshold is raised simply because online reviews commonly range widely in sentiment. A reader’s familiarity with hostile or effusive reviews does not neutralise an allegation that a builder cannot be trusted with customers’ projects.

It’s worth emphasising that this is separate from the requirement to show serious harm. For a company trading for profit, this means showing serious financial loss. Satisfying the common law threshold is necessary but not sufficient for the claim to succeed overall.

Key takeaways

• Reviews are read as a whole: a review about one job can be found to carry a wider imputation about the business’s trustworthiness generally, which substantially raises the stakes for the reviewer
• Framing is not decisive: presenting a complaint as personal experience will help characterise conclusions as opinion, but specific, verifiable assertions, such as costs incurred or promises broken, remain facts and must be capable of proof
• Section 3(3) is a low hurdle: referring generally to your own dealings with a business will usually indicate the basis of an opinion sufficiently
• The ‘everyone posts reviews’ argument has limits: the wide range of sentiment in online reviews will not, of itself, prevent a review from being defamatory
• Serious harm remains the battleground: corporate claimants must still prove serious financial loss. Evidence of lost enquiries or contracts will be critical in advancing a defamation claim
• Advice for reviewers: stick to accurate, provable facts, make clear what is opinion and why and avoid generalising from one project to the business as a whole.