2019 December 9

Zhong v. Wu, 2019 ONSC 7088

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded the plaintiff, an active member of multiple WeChat groups, defamation damages of $35,000 over dozens of messages posted on WeChat by the defendant from February to May, 2019.  Ruling in the plaintiff’s favour on a summary judgment application, the Court stated: “WeChat is a social media platform operated by a Chinese company [which] provides a function called WeChat Group, which allows users to create discussion groups to chat with group members, post images, text, etc. … Information posted in a WeChat Group is viewable and accessible to all group members and can only be deleted by the member who posted the information. … Information or messages posted in one WeChat group can be copied and forwarded to other groups, thus rendering the information potentially accessible to all WeChat users.”   In assessing damages, the Court also noted there was no way of knowing how many members of the plaintiff’s group or groups actually read the posts, and no evidence that any of the plaintiff’s friends read the posts or caused additional embarrassment by discussing it with him.  Although the Court found the defendant acted with malice, it was “not among the more serious or pronounced forms of malice.”  The defendant had not offered an apology, but did not hold “a position of status or public influence that would lend weight to the false statements he has made.”  There was no claim for income loss or any evidence of actual reputational   harm.  “While the defendant’s conduct did not rise to a level warranting punitive damages, it certainly rose to the level of warranting an order for full indemnity costs.”