Likely to the relief of publicly traded companies, the B.C. Supreme Court recently dismissed a claim in defamation over a corporate news release that provided general information about the intended response to a lawsuit. The court did so on the grounds that news releases issued by companies to report on litigation brought against them are published on occasions of either ...
Headlines in Canada have been dominated recently by allegations published by the Georgia Straight newspaper in Vancouver against John Furlong, the former CEO of the Vancouver Olympics.
The allegations are serious. They claim Furlong physically abused First Nation students when he was a teacher in Burns Lake, B.C. in 1969. In response, Furlong issued a statement denying ...
This post was submitted by Lawson Lundell guest author, Toby Kruger.
On May 10, 2012, Marko Vesely and Toby Kruger appeared at the Supreme Court of Canada on behalf of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (“BCCLA”) in A.B. by her Litigation Guardian, C.D., v Bragg Communications.
In this case, a 15 year-old girl (A.B.) in Nova Scotia became aware of a Fake ...
The internet is a wonderful thing. It provides instant access to a universe of information on nearly endless subjects. It is a worldwide forum for the exchange of content and ideas. Anyone with access to a computer can opine on anything or anybody. Frequently, commentators stray across the line and post defamatory content, often because they think their conduct anonymous. ...
The voicemail hacking scandal that brought down News of the World has raised questions about voicemail safety around the world. Gillian Shaw at the Vancouver Sun spoke to Lawson Lundell’s Marko Vesely to hear his thoughts on how these actions violate B.C.’s privacy act and Canada’s criminal code. Since then, the article has been picked up across the country in ...
This is the second installment of my blog updates. The first was on the legal wranglings of the sale of Liverpool F.C. This is on Twitter and pro athletes.
In the wake of Liverpool striker Ryan Babel tweeting on a referee and being charged and fined by his league for "improper conduct" enter England and the West Ham strike of Carlton Cole's tweets on the friendly game between ...
I opened an earlier blog post on the topic of defamation over Twitter with the hypothetical question, "How much damage can you do to a person’s reputation in 140 characters?" Accordingly to Courtney Love's recent settlement of an infamous defamation action against her, the answer seems to be - well over US$400,000.
Former Hole frontwoman Courtney Love found herself ...
A few months ago on this blog, my colleague Marko Vesely posted an excellent piece on “Defamation and Libel Meets Twitter”. For those of you who just want the “take-home”, the ultimate message remains the same - with every Facebook update, blog post or “tweet”, in the eyes of the law you are “publishing” and that makes defamation and libel applicable to you! ...
On October 28, 2010, a panel commissioned by the Ontario Attorney General delivered its report, recommending that the province enact legislation to address so-called strategic litigation against public participation or “SLAPP” suits. The panel was chaired by Mayo Moran, the dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. According to the government’s press ...
No day goes by without some new internet peril being drawn to our attention. The most recent evil is an internet based program called Firesheep. Like others (i.e. Wireshark, Tshark, Snort, Nmap, etc.), this program, a free download on the internet, allows users to troll cyberspace for open WiFi networks and, by doing so, access personal data and communications. The danger in ...
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