A patient had visited his general practitioner for kidney complaints. Later, the functionality of one of his kidneys had largely failed. The patient accused his general practitioner of not intervening decisively and timely and posted various accusations about her on his Facebook page. Among other things, he wrote “this will have some consequences for her, stubborn troll..”, “but indeed could have been a 020 resident with such a stupid face” and “when will there be an end to the practices of [name general practitioner]…? A woman claiming to be a general practitioner in [residence] and furthermore also dangerous to life for her patients.”
The general practitioner requested in summary proceedings to stop this and remove the previous messages. The judge in Rotterdam granted this as the messages were threatening, insulting, and inflammatory and harmed the honor and good name of the general practitioner while they proved to be unfounded. This outweighed the right to freedom of expression.
