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Two Ottawa lawyers have filed a proposed $80-million class-action lawsuit, alleging that Google’s search engine allows Internet users to discover names that are supposed to be shielded by court-ordered publication bans.

The proposed lawsuit follows an investigation by this newspaper last year. That review found that plugging the publication-banned name of a young offender or crime victim into the web giant’s search engine would sometimes produce results pointing to media coverage of their court cases — even though the media coverage itself didn’t mention their names.

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The statement of claim filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice is on behalf of “John Doe,” a young Vancouver resident whose name was placed under a publication ban after he was charged with undisclosed offences under the Criminal Code as a 16-year-old two years ago.

In October 2016, John Doe discovered that searching his name using Google produced articles related to his court case, even though there was a publication ban on his name and the articles did not identify him, according to the statement, filed by Ottawa lawyers Norman Mizobuchi and Michael Crystal.