2006 June 20

Sanjh Savera Weekly v. Ajit Newspaper Advertising, [2006] O.J. No. 2464

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice, in the course of assessing defamation damages to be awarded to the plaintiffs, rejected the plaintiff’s submission that publication of the offending article on the website of the defendant newspaper from October 2002 to April 2003 was a factor that weighed in support of an award of punitive damages. In this case, the Court noted that the posting of the defamatory editorial on the website was part of the standard practice of the defendant newspaper and not a special step related to the plaintiffs. “An Internet user would need to go through several steps to access the editorial, which suggests that it would not come to the attention of such users as readily as it would have reached the readers of the newspaper in its distribution in print form in the week of October 2, 2002.” The Court held that publication on the website was not shown to have likely had a material effect.