In Echelon Environmental Inc. v. Glassdoor Inc., 2022 ONCA 391, the Ontario Court of Appeal (“ONCA”) dismissed the appellant’s appeal from a decision of the motion judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, in which the motion judge denied the appellant’s request to dismiss the respondent’s defamation action under s. 137.1 of the Courts of Justice Act (“Act”), known as the “anti-SLAPP” provision of the Act. The appeal mainly focused on whether an anonymous workplace review by an employee about his/her employer relates to a matter of public interest as required by s. 137.1(3) of the Act. The ONCA opined that on such motions, “expression is to be assessed as a whole”. As such, the question is whether: “some segment of the community would have a genuine interest in receiving information on the subject”. The court must ask: “Understood in its context, what is the impugned expression really about”? … Read More
Court Orders Removal of Fake Reviews Posted by Anonymous Reviewer
In Obsidian Group Inc. v. Google LLC, 2022 ONSC 848, the moving party brought a motion, prior to commencing its civil proceeding, for an interim injunction requiring the removal of certain messages about it posted on its Google review page by a pseudonymous reviewer. It also sought a Norwich Order (an order requiring an innocent third party to provide certain information) directing the respondent to divulge identifying information regarding the unknown reviewer. The court found that there were “strong grounds for suspecting that” the reviews are fake. The court also found that it “would not surprise anyone” given the content of the reviews that they are “causing continuous damage” to the business of the applicant. The reviews seem “designed to discourage people from ever booking a room at the hotel” of the applicant. Further, according to statistics provided by the applicant, the reviews were “accessed several thousand times since they … Read More
Defamation Lawyers and the Inference of Publication
In our blog Toronto Defamation Lawyers – Libel and Slander Law in Ontario, we suggest that in order to be successful on a defamation claim, one would have to prove that the allegedly defamatory publication was “published”, among other things. The court of appeal has provided some clarity on what it means to “publish” defamatory content. In Zoutman v. Graham, 2020 ONCA 767 (CanLII), the court contends on an appeal from a summary judgment motion, that a defamation claim requires proof that the “words were communicated to at least one person other than the plaintiff”. On the original summary judgment motion, the motions judge acknowledged that there was no evidence that the allegedly defamatory postings were viewed by anyone other than the parties and their lawyers. However, the motions judge drew an “inference of publication” from the totality of the circumstances. In drawing the inference of publication, the motions judge … Read More
B.C. Court Claims Jurisdiction over International Online Defamation Case
This blog post is further to our blog on the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) decision in Haaretz.com v. Goldhar, 2018 SCC 28 (CanLII) (“Haaretz”) wherein the SCC opined that Israel was a more convenient forum for an online defamation claim brought by the plaintiff in Ontario (even though the SCC recognized that Ontario had jurisdiction over the matter). The SCC considered a number of factors in its decision (all outlined in our blog). In the recent Supreme Court of British Columbia (“BCSC”) decision, Giustra v Twitter, Inc., 2021 BCSC 54 (CanLII) (“Giustra”), the BCSC confirmed that even where jurisdiction is found, a court can decline to exercise its jurisdiction under the principle that its court is not the most convenient forum for the hearing of the dispute (largely following the tenets laid out in Haaretz). The court in Giustra cited Haaretz in pointing out that the applicable law in … Read More