The databases maintained by the defendants
- Net-HaMishpat website
According to the testimony of the witness on behalf of the Courts Administration, the Courts Administration manages a computerized system for managing electronic cases (the "Net-HaMishpat" system) in which it is possible to upload documents to the files managed in the various courts. The documents submitted to the file will be open for review by the judicial authorities, the administrative level (secretaries, treasurers, etc.), the litigants and their representatives. In addition, the public is entitled to review the files and all the documents filed therein after submitting an application for a viewing permit (see paragraph 5 of the affidavit).
- In addition, in accordance with the principle of the publicity of the hearing, anyone is entitled to review all judgments and decisions given in all cases that are not confidential (paragraph 4 of the affidavit). In addition, the court administration allows legal databases to obtain access to the entire database of judgments and decisions, but this is done subject to the signing of a letter of undertaking drafted by the court administration, in which the legal database undertakes to act in accordance with the instructions of the court administration (paragraph 6 of the affidavit). The defendant has not signed such a letter of undertaking (paragraph 9 of the affidavit).
- In the framework of the cross-examination, it became clear that beyond the publication of the judgments and decisions, the Net-Mishpat website contains additional information that is exposed to the public, and not only to the parties listed above, such as (inter alia) the dates of the hearings, the type of claim and the names of the parties to the proceeding, without ID numbers, addresses and telephone numbers and the names of the parties' counsel (p. 71, paras. 27-33, and also p. 98 transcript, paras. 20-34). An exception to this exists in proceedings of this type, such as one in which the names of the parties are prohibited from publication, for example in a claim for bodily injury, in which case the name will appear as so-and-so (p. 100, paras. 5-9). It also became clear that, as a rule, in appeals against decisions of the National Insurance Institute's medical committees, the names of the appellants will be visible to the public, unless a judicial decision is issued ordering a gag order (p. 99, paras. 37-38).
- According to the plaintiff, the court administration also transferred documents to commercial databases for which a gag order was issued. In order to prove the claim, the plaintiff refers to the defendant's words in another legal proceeding. This argument was argued beyond necessity, since the plaintiff does not claim that this happened in his case.
- The "Judgment Worm" website
The defendant testified on his behalf and on behalf of the defendant about the nature of the "Trial Worm" website, its modus operandi and its goals. Since the defendant was one of the defendant's founders and a member of its board of directors, and since he showed great proficiency in its methods of work and the operation of the site, I am of the opinion that this testimony is sufficient for the purpose of understanding the manner in which the site operates, and I reject the plaintiff's claim that expert testimony is required for this purpose.
- According to the defendant's testimony, like any other legal database, the database is used for the purpose of locating legal proceedings and judgments. However, it seems that unlike other legal databases, its main purpose and relative advantage is not in locating legal precedents or references to legal claims, but rather in locating people. Thus, according to the testimony, the website makes it possible to locate plaintiffs or serial defendants (paragraph 3.9 of the affidavit), or to examine relationships between lawyers, as expressed in the courts (paragraph 3.10).
- As stated above, the publication on the "Trial Worm" website was organized in such a way that a person's name was published at the top of the page, with a list of the numbers of the proceedings in which he was involved, and the names of the parties (or some of them). In some cases, the publication included a link, the click of which led the surfer to the judgment or decision given in the proceeding.
- According to the defendant's testimony, the "Judgment Worm" website is fed by two main sources of information. The first (and main) source is the Net-Mishpat website, which is operated by the Courts Administration. The Law Worm website automatically copied from the Net-HaMishpat website all the information that did not require identification, and was not confidential, from the files that were not defined as confidential, and were opened according to the new numbering method (paragraphs 3.5-3.7 of the affidavit). This information includes the case numbers, the names of the parties, decisions and judgments. The information was uploaded to the "Trial Worm" website automatically, without the defendant herself checking whether there was an impediment to its publication. In addition, the defendant did not retroactively check whether files published by it became confidential files after the date of publication, and did not act to remove information from these files from the website in which it owned (p. 82 of the transcript of the hearing of December 3, 2025, paras. 19-21).
- When a case was conducted behind closed doors and without a gag order, the names of the parties in each proceeding were published on the Net-Mishpat website in the "Factors" folder. In this state of affairs, the number of the proceeding was published on the defendant's website on the page associated with each of those factors. At the same time, by clicking on the link of the proceeding number, the decision document as it appears on the Net-Mishpat website is opened. In other words, if the decision shows an ID number next to the name of a litigant, it will also be displayed on the "Trial Worm" website. If the decision does not specify the names of the parties, the decision will also be displayed on the defendant's website, even though the document is linked to a page in which the same names are listed (pp. 72, s. 30 - p. 73, s. 20).
- The defendant's second source of information is information that people sent her, such as pleadings and affidavits (whether they were the submitters of the document, or whether the document was created by the other party), as well as judicial decisions that they had. Here, too, the defendant did not examine whether there was a legal impediment to the publication of the documents received by it from the general public, but relied on the declaration of the parties who handed over the documents to her, that the documents were not prohibited from publication (p. 57 of the transcript of the hearing of December 3, 2025).
- According to the defendant, many people requested that content be removed from the website, and as a rule, the defendant's policy is to refuse all requests, unless the request is accompanied by a gag order (section 3.12). However, when the defendant was sent a gag order, she honored the order and acted immediately to remove the publication. The plaintiff agrees that this is indeed the defendant's policy, and it is also proven by the correspondence that the plaintiff attached to his affidavit (Appendix 21 and Appendix 31).
The publications for which the lawsuit was filed
- In Appendix 3 to the statement of claim, the plaintiff attached a photocopy of the search results for his name in the "Google" search engine. This photograph shows that the first result is a link to the "Trial Worm" website, and immediately afterwards a link appears to other websites that published judgments in which the plaintiff was a party to the proceeding, including a proceeding conducted by the plaintiff against the National Insurance Institute and published on a website other than the Trial Worm.
- Page 28 of the statement of claim is a printout of the page from "The Worm of the Law", which, according to its title, details "the proceedings in which Erez Aumann appears as a litigant". The title does not indicate the plaintiff's ID number. According to this page, the plaintiff was a party in 11 proceedings, for each of which the number of the proceeding and the names of the parties were indicated in the link. I will note that with regard to the first proceeding on the list, the plaintiff's name is not mentioned as a plaintiff or as a defendant, but according to the title, there was more than one plaintiff and one defendant in this proceeding.
- 00For the sake of convenience and clarity, and contrary to the order of things in the statement of claim, the details of the publications for which the claim was filed in chronological order will be presented below. As you can see, some of the proceedings for which the lawsuit was filed appear on a page with the plaintiff's name on it, and some of them are not mentioned there. Next to the description of each publication, it will be written whether it was removed by the defendant, when and why.
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Documents from National Insurance File 11270/09