Supreme Court to Hear Case on Defamation Liability for Hyperlinking

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to weigh in on whether hyperlinking to defamatory material on another website can give rise to liability for defamation. It has granted leave to appeal the BC Court of Appeal decision in Crookes v. Newton. Newton had written an article on his website in which he linked to allegedly defamatory articles on other sites about Crookes. Crookes sued Newton for defamation, alleging that Newton became a publisher of the impugned articles by creating hyperlinks to those articles or by refusing to remove the links when advised of the articles' defamatory character.

The BC Supreme Court dismissed Crookes's action, finding that merely hyperlinking to defamatory material, without repeating the comments themselves, does not amount to publication. The court also found that there could not be a finding of publication without proof that visitors to the defendant's website actually followed the hyperlinks and read the defamatory statements on