Dutch surgeon wins landmark 'right to be forgotten' case; The Guardian, January 21, 2019

Daniel Boffey, The Guardian; Dutch surgeon wins landmark 'right to be forgotten' case

"A Dutch surgeon formally disciplined for her medical negligence has won a legal action to remove Google search results about her case in a landmark “right to be forgotten” ruling...

Google and the Dutch data privacy watchdog, Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, initially rejected attempts to have the links removed on the basis that the doctor was still on probation and the information remained relevant.

However, in what is said to be the first right to be forgotten case involving medical negligence by a doctor, the district court of Amsterdam subsequently ruled the surgeon had “an interest in not indicating that every time someone enters their full name in Google’s search engine, (almost) immediately the mention of her name appears on the ‘blacklist of doctors’, and this importance adds more weight than the public’s interest in finding this information in this way”...

The European court of justice established the “right to be forgotten” in a 2014 ruling relating to a Spanish citizen’s claim against material about him found on Google searches. It allows European citizens to ask search engines to remove links to “inadequate, irrelevant or … excessive” content. About 3 million people in Europe have since made such a request."