Homeowner's TikTok rant about his builder ends with A$883,000 in damages, likely over A$1 million with costs

The homeowner signed with Singh Homes in 2022 for a house in Truganina, on Melbourne's western edge. The job broke down over his complaints about workmanship and the builder's complaints about his payments, and Singh Homes ended the contract on Feb. 12, 2024. Two days later he posted on a Facebook page called Dodgy Builders Melbourne. On Feb. 17 he uploaded a TikTok video in Punjabi naming the company and its directors, Parvinder Singh Sarwara and Daman Preet Singh Anand. It drew about 220,000 views and was passed around on WhatsApp, according to law firm Cornwalls.

A jury found the posts were malicious, misleading and an injurious falsehood, and that they defamed the directors. Comments under the video added a claim that the builder was heading into liquidation, which was false. Judge Julie Clayton awarded the company A$673,000 for customers who walked away, counting lost profit on each deal discounted by the odds it would have closed. She gave the directors only A$5,000 each, finding they had not proved serious harm to their reputations.

In August the Court of Appeal reversed that part. The jury had treated the comments other users left under his video as his own publications, so the trial judge should have counted the harm they did, including the liquidation claim, the court said. It sent the damages back to Clayton, who set them at A$105,000 per director, according to a Nov. 3 report compiled by Head Topics from The Age.

The appeal court left one question open: whether an ordinary customer's online review can be conduct in trade or commerce under the Australian Consumer Law. It did not need to answer, because the unappealed injurious falsehood verdict supported the damages anyway.