Do you regularly use hyperlinks on your Internet sites or blogs
to refer your visitors to external content? The recent decision
rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Crookes v. Newton
case may protect you against a liability that you probably
didn't know existed.
On October 19, 2011, the highest court in the country ruled that
referring readers of an article, blog or other written matters on
the Internet to another site that contains defamatory comments, by
means of a hyperlink, does not constitute defamation unless the
defamatory comments are presented or repeated, or the creator of
the hyperlink adopts ou endorses the content it refers to.
The main facts of the case were as follows: Mr. Newton owned and
operated an Internet site in British Columbia containing various
articles on different subjects, some of which dealt with freedom of
expression in the context of the Internet. One of these articles
contained hyperlinks referring readers to a site that
