June 01, 2022
By Athina Ionita In Dent-X Canada v. Houde, 2022 ONCA 414, the Court of Appeal considered whether a defamation action concerning an internet post about the plaintiff’s services in supplying face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic should be dismissed pursuant to Ontario’s “anti-SLAPP” legislation, s. 137.1 of the Courts of Justice Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. […]
May 03, 2022
The decision in Cyr v. LeBlanc, 2022 ONSC 2555, shows that damages in defamation actions can be quite high. The defendant published statements about the plaintiff on several websites. Many of the statements labeled the plaintiff as being racist. The plaintiff contacted the defendant by Instagram, requesting the postings be removed. The defendant escalated the […]
November 05, 2021
At our weekly meeting, Annie Levanaj discussed the recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Echelon Environmental Inc. v. Glassdoor Inc., 2021 ONCA 763. This decision dealt with a motion brought by a “John Doe” defendant, who was an anonymous online poster, to extend time to serve and file a Notice of Appeal from […]
October 25, 2021
The court recently recently released a decision in an interesting defamation action involving comments made on social media. The facts of the decision in Lavallee et al. v. Isak, 2021 ONSC 6661, are as follows: [1] On May 30, 2020, Justine Lavallee, Shania Lavallee, and Gilmour Driscoll-Maurice (Shania’s boyfriend) were play fighting. Shania took a […]
July 03, 2020
This morning, at our weekly firm meeting, Matthew Umbrio addressed the Ontario Court of Appeal decision of Nanda v. McEwan, 2020 ONCA 431. The appeal was brought by the moving party/defendants from an order made under s.137.1 of the Courts of Justice Act dismissing an “anti-SLAPP” motion. The action was commenced by a union member […]
February 11, 2020
People who post defamatory statements on the Internet can be found liable for damages even if their identities are not known at the time of the court hearing. In Theralase Technologies Inc. v. Lanter, 2020 ONSC 205, the defendants posted defamatory statements on a website that was aimed at investors. The messages were posted under pseudonyms. […]
