2023 October 30

Achor v. Ihekweme, 2023 ABKB 606

The Alberta Court of King’s Bench, assessing damages after a default judgment against the defendant, awarded $50,000 general damages to the female plaintiff and $75,000 general damages to the male plaintiff over defamatory posts on the defendant’s Instagram account, which had 16,000 viewers.  The Court described the defendant as “a popular social media influencer”.    The Court also noted that “[t]he insidious nature of comments posted on social media is that the plaintiff will never know the impact on their reputation as a result of defamatory comments. … the more people exposed to lies the greater the likely harm.”