2017 January 17

Kazakoff v. Taft, 2017 BCSC 66

The British Columbia Supreme Court struck out defences of truth and fair comment in the defendant’s response to civil claim concerning an Internet posting in the reader response portion of a website dealing with local news in the East Kootenay area.

The response to civil claim denied that the posting conveyed the allegedly defamatory meanings complained of by the plaintiff. Instead, the response to civil claim plead alleged lesser, alternative defamatory meanings. The Court characterized those alleged lesser, defamatory meanings as “anaemic” and found certain elements of the response to civil claim to contain an unsatisfactory mixture of pleaded fact, evidence, argument and in some instances, irrelevant material. “In the case at bar, an alternative defamatory meaning which excises the article and press release which provide a link to the video will not be permitted.” “If the defendant wishes to plead an alternative defamatory meaning, he must set it forth in a straightforward manner and must engage the context of the allegedly defamatory language: a posting tied to the E-Know article which specifically referred to the press release and the linked video.“