2017 November 14

Bagwalla v. Ronin, 2017 ONSC 6693

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Divisional Court) varied an interlocutory injunction that required all of the impugned websites to be taken down and held that the plaintiff’s interest was adequately served by an order requiring the appellants/defendants to delete from their websites any hyperlink or other reference to certain digital articles.  The Divisional Court considered that the combined effect of the digital articles and the websites resulted in defamation.  “Although the Websites do not repeat the defamatory content of the digital articles, they render the digital articles defamatory by effectively identifying the persons who would have otherwise remained anonymous.  In my view, utilization of the hyperlinks to that effect amounts to publication sufficient to warrant the application of the law of defamation.”