2021 July 2

385277 Ontario Ltd. v. Gold, 2021 ONSC 4717 

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted the plaintiff landlord an interlocutory injunction to enjoin a “deliberate course” of online harassment which the Court characterized as “a major issue in Canadian society.”  The alleged online harassment involved YouTube videos.  The Court held that “[w]hether people harass others online to gain clicks (and thereby make money), to hurt, or to intimidate, the law must be able to respond with some boundary to protect and preserve countervailing values like peoples’ privacy, their right to go about their days unmolested, their right to health and to protect the health of their loved ones, and the rule of law.”  “I am prepared to recognize that it is unlawful harassment, to use the internet in a manner that is outrageous in character, duration, and extreme in degree, with the intent to coerce behaviour by causing fear, anxiety, emotional upset or impugning the dignity of the plaintiff online.  In my view this is an incremental step in the development of the law that goes no further than required to deal with the case before me.”

The Court also expressed the view that “social media algorithms deliberately foment controversy by re-publishing aggressive or outlandish statements regardless of their truth. It was long before the journalism profession had become so diminished in the public eye that many people seem to prefer ‘fake news’ to journalistic integrity. It was before the risk that any common, non-famous Karen or Kevin could ‘go viral’ and be cancelled – losing their jobs, their reputations, and the security of their families’ lives – based on committing some previously unknown form of heresy as asserted unilaterally by any number of modern day, self-appointed Senator Joseph McCarthys.”

The Court specifically declined to rely on the traditional torts of defamation and intimidation as a basis for this pre-trial injunction.