Amidst calls for legislative reform and enhanced powers for
privacy regulators, Canadian courts are playing their own part in
expanding the scope of individuals' privacy rights. In
particular, an Ontario court has recently recognized the privacy
tort of "false light publicity".1
The Facts
The case involved a family law dispute wherein a man
engaged in a years-long cyberbullying campaign of his children,
their mother and their grandparents.
The father's egregious actions included, among other things,
creating websites, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, petitions and
GoFundMe accounts alleging that his ex-wife was drugging and
holding their daughter captive, forging documents and defrauding
the government. The father arranged for posters including
false allegations about his ex-wife and her family to be
disseminated, and even went so far as to have these allegations
spread to his ex-wife's church, workplace and community in the
United Kingdom.
