By JO-MARIE BROWN
A "slanderous" e-mail circulating in Auckland is threatening to destroy one of the city's taxi companies.
Ideal Cabs general manager Sandra Hunter said that since an e-mail about a driver began circulating on May 24, the company had lost up to 60 per cent of its business.
Ms Hunter said the driver, who allegedly assaulted a female passenger, was arrested by police and sacked by Ideal Cabs.
But the e-mail called for a boycott of the company as the author - a friend of the woman allegedly attacked - mistakenly believed the driver still worked for the firm.
An Auckland University research coordinator, Fezeela Raza, says she received the e-mail from a friend and passed it on to several others.
She did not feel obliged to check its validity.
"I wasn't making the accusation," she said. "I was passing on what I had heard, and as a woman who takes taxis you need to know these things."
Ideal Cabs did not deny the attack occurred, Sandra Hunter said, but the e-mail was "totally incorrect" and "slanderous" in saying the driver had not been dismissed.
"As soon as I knew about it he was out. We did act straight away, and it's not fair to discredit the whole company," she said.
"The e-mail has done a huge amount of damage. Every taxi driver is self-employed, so it's not just hurting the company, it's hurting every single driver."
Ms Hunter said the company had lost between 50 and 60 per cent of its business, putting its 400 drivers under severe financial strain.
Ms Hunter said the woman who wrote the e-mail had since apologised to Ideal Cabs and tried to circulate a retraction.
"But I haven't heard of anybody getting that one. I just wish she had picked up the phone and rung me first."
Ms Raza said she passed on the original message without verifying its content because the alternative was to sit on information which could benefit other women.
Ms Hunter said Ideal Cabs would not sue the e-mail's author for defamation.
The company was hoping business would pick up again soon.
A University of Canterbury media law expert, Professor John Burrows, said defamation over the Internet was a widespread problem.
He said people who forwarded defamatory e-mail could find themselves liable.
Cyber-slur threatens taxi firm's future
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