All of this will be done at a reasonable length that will be given to the defendant.
- In addition, the defendant will bear the plaintiff's attorney's fees, with the liability being made on the basis of the amount awarded and the enforcement remedy, but also taking into account the large gap between the amount of the claim and the amount awarded. Due to this discrepancy I did not find that the defendant should be obligated to pay the court fee.
Part Four: Conclusion
- I did not find any substance in the other arguments of the parties.
- And this is how it can be summed up:
- During 2013, a dispute arose between the plaintiff and the defendant in connection with a transaction for the purchase of properties in Bulgaria. As a result of this dispute, a previous lawsuit between the parties has been clarified since 2018, and it ended with a settlement agreement in 2023.
- During 2015, the defendant began publishing a number of chapters on the Internet under the name of "The Bulgarian Fraud". The book was defined by the defendant as a work of fiction, and any connection between it and reality is completely coincidental. In the same chapters of the book that were published, a complex plot of espionage and crime is presented that focuses on Bulgaria. Many characters are involved in the same plot, including a character who is referred to in this judgment as "the villain". The same character, "the villain," is often described with derogatory words.
- The plaintiff claims that it is easy to identify the character of the "villain" as his own, and this was also given to him by many of his acquaintances. This identification, the plaintiff claims, constitutes defamation against him and an infringement of his privacy. This identification, the plaintiff adds, is not coincidental, but stems from the defendant's intention and desire to harass him against the background of the dispute between them.
- The defendant denies the plaintiff's claims and adheres to the claim that the book, as its name implies , is a completely fictional work. A work that is possible and characters from reality served as inspiration for the defendant, but the plaintiff cannot be identified as a character in the book, and there is certainly no basis for the claim that the work was used to try to harm the plaintiff.
- The defendant raised two preliminary arguments to dismiss the claim - an act of the court and a statute of limitations. These arguments were rejected because no judicial decision was found on the grounds that are the subject of this lawsuit, and when the publications for which the lawsuit was filed were published, in part, during 2016 as well, and they are still distributed by the defendant.
- At the center of the disputes was the question of identifying the plaintiff as the "villain" in the book. The decision in this dispute was made by applying the "reasonable sale" test, i.e., a test that examines the totality of the circumstances from an objective perspective in order to determine whether the plaintiff's "reasonable sale" is liable to identify the "villain" as a character representing the plaintiff. The application of this test showed a great similarity, almost identical, between the plaintiff and the "villain".
The applicant has Israeli citizenship and a career in academia. He is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Sofia, specializing in intelligence research. The plaintiff has a business relationship with a company called CCI that deals in computer fraud. The plaintiff is also engaged in real estate business and the purchase of properties in Bulgaria. This is the plaintiff and, exactly, so is the "villain" in the book. He is also presented as an Israeli living in Europe, a lecturer in academia, the president of a company that fights computer crime, and a real estate business in Bulgaria. The description of the "villain" also matches the plaintiff's details - he is overweight, underwent gastric bypass surgery and is diabetic.