2023 December 23

DeLuca v. Foodbenders, 2023 ONSC 6465

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded $75,000 general damages and $10,000 punitive damages to the plaintiff, a former soldier, over defamatory social media posts.  The Court inferred that “generally, people follow particular social media because they like or are interested in what those sites say”.  “[T]here is no reason to think, or evidence to suggest, that the average person knew enough about [the plaintiff] … so as to be able to form the conclusion that [the defamatory] allegations about him were not true or not from a credible source.”