UAE influencer fined Dh81,000 over defamatory restaurant video

Abu Dhabi: As part of its ongoing awareness campaigns to promote legal culture and public understanding of the law, the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department has released a story-based awareness video titled “A Brief Video… A Costly Price” as part of its “Stories and Lessons” series. The initiative aims to enhance legal and community awareness by highlighting the legal consequences of everyday actions through real-life-inspired narratives.

In a world saturated by screens, some mistakenly believe that posting digital content is merely an exercise in freedom of expression. However, the law has established a definitive boundary between constructive criticism aimed at improvement and defamation that dismantles a commercial reputation.

​The incident unfolded when a social media "influencer" chose to direct her smartphone camera toward a renowned restaurant-not to evaluate the quality of the cuisine or the service, but to broadcast disparaging remarks impugning the integrity of the proprietor and his management of the establishment.

​Faced with this digital assault on his personal standing and his business, the restaurateur did not remain idle. He promptly sought legal recourse by filing an official report with the competent authorities, asserting that the published footage bypassed the limits of fair comment and inflicted profound moral and material damage on the reputation he had cultivated over many years.

​Upon being summoned and confronted with the recorded material, the defendant admitted during the initial inquiry and Public Prosecution investigations to filming the premises and publishing the video via her personal account. She sought to justify her actions as "criticism"; however, investigators determined that the language employed deviated from objective evaluation, constituting direct abuse under the statutes governing insult and defamation via technological means, as it targeted individuals and their character rather than the product or service provided.

​Following the trial before the competent court, a verdict was delivered sentencing the defendant to a fine of Dh30,000. The court further ordered the deletion of the offensive clip and the confiscation of the mobile phone used in the incident as an instrument of crime. The repercussions extended beyond the criminal penalty; the court also ordered the defendant to pay Dh51,000 as temporary civil compensation to the aggrieved party. Consequently, the total cost of that moment of defamation reached Dh81,000, transforming digital "views" into a stark legal lesson: disparaging others is never fit for publication.