2005 September 27

Cooper v. Hennan, 2005 ABQB 709

The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ordered the plaintiff’s to provide particulars of the precise words they complain of in an email, portions of which had been incorporated by the plaintiffs in an Amended Statement of Claim. The Court held that allowing the plaintiffs to “incorporate whole paragraphs of an e-mail into their Amended Statement of Claim would be tantamount to a fishing expedition and would encourage speculative lawsuits. Further, the Court held that the Amended Statement of Claim should identify at least one recipient of the defamatory publication beyond themselves. In this connection, the Court stated: “With the exception of the internet ‘chat rooms’ mentioned in the Amended Statement of Claim, I am unsympathetic to the plaintiff’s concern that publication via e-mail is ubiquitous and accessible by multiple people. Sending a publication by e-mail is different that posting it on the internet; in each e-mail there is a list of addresses to whom the message has been sent. I regard email as being similar to regular mail because there is usually both an identified sender and recipient. I have seen no evidence that makes this case an exception.”