2024 December 20

Van Leeuwen et al v. Calderone,  2024 ONSC 7178

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered the defendant to pay $35,000 general damages to the individual plaintiff and his corporation for defamatory posts on a public Facebook forum with approximately 3,500 members; two stories on the defendant’s Instagram page (12,700 followers); numerous posts and comments made to the plaintiffs’ own Instagram page, tagging the plaintiffs’ followers; and for review bombing the corporate plaintiff on Google with a series of 1-star reviews from fictitious users. The Court noted that the defendant’s activities had stopped, the Google reviews and Instagram posts had been removed, and the Instagram stories had automatically expired. In deciding on the figure to award for damages, the Court specifically took into account that the defendant “had used the Internet to hide his identity.”