2021 October 6

Pineau v. KMI Publishing and Events Ltd., 2021 BCSC 1952

The British Columbia Supreme Court awarded the plaintiff $60,000 general damages over a defamatory article published by the defendants in an online magazine.  Liability for the publication had previously been determined by the Court in 2021 BCSC 1268.  The Court noted that analytic reports suggested the article had received a total of 393 page views and was seen by people in Houston, Sidney, suburbs of Ontario, Montreal, Kansas City and New York.  The Court nevertheless concluded that those numbers were not precise and not conclusive about the scope of publication, stating that “the internet can be a particularly dangerous mode of publication for defamatory content.”  The Court held that the fact the article appeared in an apparently simple Google search “indicates that it was widely accessible to those conducting searches of the plaintiff’s name, as potential employers might well be expected to do.”  “Further, three or four hundred confirmed views based on Google Analytics is not an insignificant number, particularly for a short article that takes little time to read in full.”