2016 April 20

Pritchard v. Van Nes, 2016 BCSC 686

The BC Supreme Court awarded $50,000 general damages and $15,000 punitive damages to the plaintiff teacher over Facebook posts by a neighbour which contained serious and false accusations about the plaintiff. The defendant had more than 2,000 Facebook friends and her privacy settings were set to “Public,” allowing her posts to be viewed by all Facebook users. The defendant was also held to be liable for defamatory comments made by her friends in response to her posts and in a defamatory email by one of her “friends” which copied the contents of one of her posts and was forwarded to a school principal.