Reputation has a one-year clock. Speak to Kestrel.
A defamation claim needs a statement published to others that seriously harms your reputation, and for businesses that means serious financial loss, a deliberately high bar. Truth and honest opinion are complete defences, so the first honest question is whether the words can be disproved. The limitation is one year, the shortest in civil law. Often the fastest wins are takedown and correction, not damages: the goal is the record fixed, not the fight enjoyed.
The claim requires publication, identification and serious harm to reputation; trading companies must show serious financial loss or its likelihood. Fleeting insults and pure opinion rarely qualify. The one-year limitation runs from first publication, and each substantially new publication starts its own.
The defences shape everything: truth defeats the claim entirely, honest opinion protects genuinely held views on stated facts, and publication on matters of public interest carries its own protection. This is why reviews are dangerous ground for claimants: an honest one-star experience is protected, a fabricated account of events that never happened is not.
Remedies run from takedown and correction through apologies to damages and injunctions. Website operators and platforms have complaint procedures with legal consequences for ignoring notice of unlawful content, and pre-action letters resolve a large share of cases: most people, faced with proving their words true, choose deletion.
Guide edition: August 2026. General information for England and Wales. Current law and your particular facts require assessment before action.
Screenshots with dates and URLs, the audience reached, and evidence of the harm: lost contracts, cancelled bookings, the client who mentioned it.
What exactly is stated as fact, and can any of it be proved true? This determines whether you have a claim or a grievance, and it is done before any letter.
Platform complaint on the unlawful content in parallel with a letter to the author: retraction, deletion, apology, and undertakings, with proceedings behind it.
Litigation for the cases with serious quantifiable harm and a clean truth position. Costs are real and trials amplify the original statement; the strategy prices both.
Tell Kestrel what happened. The AI legal assistant gathers the facts and prepares a summary for you to check. Request lawyer review from your Legal Centre.
Speak to Kestrel nowOne year from publication, strictly applied. Platform takedown routes and evidence preservation start the same week the statement is found; screenshots taken today are the claim's foundation tomorrow.
This guide concerns Civil disputes. It forms part of our reference library. Kestrel is preparing for SRA authorisation. See practice details for the proposed service and current availability.
A review by a non-customer describing events that never happened is defamation territory and breaches every platform's rules. The pair of platform complaint and author letter removes most of them; the ones from real customers with real complaints need service recovery, not lawyers.
Publication to your actual market is where serious financial loss shows fastest, and departing-staff statements often breach contractual duties too, adding claims. A firm letter with undertakings sought usually ends it; evidence of which clients heard what builds the case if not.
Sometimes, and honestly, often not: costs are heavy and trials republish the sting to a bigger audience. The calculus is quantifiable loss against cost and amplification. Takedown, correction and undertakings achieve the commercial goal in most cases, which is why they come first.
Platforms hold identifying data, and court orders can compel its disclosure where a real claim is shown. Anonymity slows the route; it does not close it. The one-year clock keeps running meanwhile, so preservation and the platform route start immediately.
Start with the AI legal assistant, then follow the case, messages and lawyer review in your Legal Centre.
Speak to Kestrel