2022 June 27

Sommer v. Goldi, 2022 ONSC 3830

In this judgment, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded the plaintiff lawyer further damages aggregating $450,000 plus costs of $24,119.64 over a campaign of very serious internet defamation and harassment which the defendants had started in 2014.   [The award consisted of $300,000 general damages, $100,000 aggravated damages and $50,000 punitive damages].  To these sums must be added the award of $41,600 special damages for lost fee income contained in a partial judgment issued previously on October 21, 2021.

Regarding the $300,000 general damages award, the Court noted “the defendants stated themselves that their intent was to cause [the plaintiff] professional and financial loss and to drive him out of business.”  “The language used in the defamatory posts is intemperate.  This is no dispassionate disagreement on a matter of public interest and debate, but a wholesale personal attack …” “Internet defamation is not some lesser form of defamation.  Often awards related to internet defamation have been higher than awards related to publication in other ways, since publications on the internet have continued presence and effect for many months, often years, and these publications are notoriously difficult to remove from the internet entirely.” “This was a systematic and ongoing campaign, and the wearing personal and reputational effect of such a campaign cannot be discounted.”

As concerns the $100,000 award for aggravated damages, the Court held the defendants had been guilty of egregious misconduct.  “When put on notice of the plaintiff’s claims, the defendants did not remove the defamatory posts from the internet.  They left them up.  And they continued their campaign.  Then they conducted themselves in the litigation in a manner designed to prolong delay in the litigation.” “The net result , for the plaintiff, has been a feeling of frustration and impotence in the face of an obvious and ongoing civil wrong committed against him.”

The $50,000 award of punitive damages took into account the defendants’ “ongoing abuse of the court’s process bringing and not pursuing motions, refusing to comply with court directions to move forward with the case, willfully refusing to open packages containing court documents served on them in a myriad of ways.  All of this was designed to enable the [defendants] to continue unchecked their prolonged campaign of defamation and harassment.”