2008 October 17

Prud’Homme c. Rawdon (Municipality of), 2008 QCCA 1985

The Quebec Court of Appeal refused to hear an interlocutory appeal from a pre-trial judgment of the Quebec Superior Court which had rejected a defence application to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Municipality of Rawdon for defamation over a website operated by the defendant.

The defendants unsuccessfully argued in Superior Court that a government body should not be permitted to bring an action in defamation against a member of the public in view of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression in section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court of Appeal agreed that the defence application “raised a serious legal question, of general interest, elegantly framed, and which in the end might be decided in their favour.” On the other hand, the appeal court was “not convinced that the use and the abuse of recent technology, and in particular of the Internet, by anonymous pamphleteers, may not call for a contextual reconsideration of the limits of free speech that is defamatory. Addressing a small crowd in the flesh and from the north-east corner of Hyde Park is one thing, connecting from a suburban basement, and by means of the Internet, with a vast and anonymous multitude in the cyberspace may be quite another thing. It may be that, technologically, the medium, so enhances the message as to radically  alter its impact and oblige its originator to exercise a degree of caution not expected of orators around Speaker’s Corner.”

In all the circumstances, the Court of Appeal held that this important issue should be considered at a trial where an adequate evidentiary record would be before the lower court.