2020 September 30

Maison Privé v. Moghtadaei, 2020 CanLII 75615 (ON SC)

The Ontario Superior Court granted an application by the plaintiffs by counterclaim/defendants for an interim injunction prohibiting the corporate plaintiff and the two individuals named as defendants to the counterclaim from “publishing, broadcasting, or communicating on the internet or elsewhere any defamatory words or images” concerning the plaintiffs by counterclaim/defendants “including defamatory words concerning [this] litigation.”  The Court  noted that “technology has also given rise to new ways for harassment to occur and it can proliferate defamatory and hateful content at remarkable speed, with the click of a button.” “Pictures and words can live on indefinitely on the web, accessible to all.   So not only is the web an amazing and important tool, it can also be a dangerous one if used for malicious purposes.”   The corporate plaintiff and the two individual defendants by counterclaim were also ordered to remove posts concerning the plaintiffs by counterclaim that had already been published on the internet and social media, including specific Instagram accounts.

The Court acknowledged that “injunctions in defamation cases ‘should only be granted in the rarest and clearest of cases, and where the words are so clearly defamatory and impossible to justify that the claim would almost certainly succeed (Fortress Real Developments Inc. v Franklin, 2018 ONSC 296 at para. 15)”.  “While there is a very strong public interest in protecting speech, there may be a reduced public interest in protecting speech that contains, inter alia, personal attacks and vitriol.”  This interim injunction Order was scheduled to come up for review on November 6, 2020. On November 12, the Court made a further Order (by consent) extending the injunction against the corporate plaintiff pending trial and ordering that the terms of the injunction against the two individual defendants by counterclaim remain in force until further Order of the Court.