$7,500 In Damages Awarded For Intrusion Upon Seclusion

In McIntosh v. Legal Aid Ontario, Superior Court Justice Cornell awarded the plaintiff damages of $7,500 after finding a breach under the relatively new tort of intrusion upon seclusion. This tort was first recognized in Ontario in Jones v. Tsige, 2012 ONCA 32 (CanLII), in which the Court of Appeal for Ontario allowed a civil action for damages for the invasion of personal privacy in Ontario and awarded the plaintiff $10,000 in damages.

The facts of McIntosh are as follows. During a fight with her ex-boyfriend in June of 2010, the plaintiff was advised by him that his new girlfriend, who worked at Legal Aid Ontario, had accessed her file in order to gather information about the plaintiff. The defendant then telephoned the plaintiff and revealed that she had obtained confidential information from the plaintiff's Legal Aid Ontario case file, including that the plaintiff was involved with a Children's Aid file. The defendant threatened to call the Children's Aid Society