Defamation is a statement that would lower your reputation in the eyes of an ordinary person, communicated to someone else. You do not have to prove it is false — the defendant has to prove a defence. The hard parts are the deadlines, which are short, and the costs risk.
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Three elements. The words would tend to lower your reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person. They referred to you. And they were published — communicated to at least one person other than you. A single email to one recipient is publication.
You do not need to be named. If the people reading it would understand it was about you, that is enough. Innuendo counts too: words innocent on their face can be defamatory given facts the audience already knows.
Once those elements are made out, falsity and damage are presumed. The burden shifts to the defendant to establish a defence. That is a genuinely plaintiff-friendly starting point, and it is why the defences and the procedural traps carry so much weight in practice.
Libel is written, printed or broadcast; slander is spoken. Slander generally requires proof of actual financial loss, with exceptions — notably words attacking someone in the way they carry on their trade, business or profession.
Justification. A substantially true statement is not actionable, however damaging, and however spiteful the motive for publishing it. This is the first question to ask about your own case, honestly, before you spend anything.
Absolute privilege protects statements made in court proceedings and in the legislature. Qualified privilege protects a statement made to someone with a corresponding duty or interest in receiving it — a reference given to a prospective employer, a report to police, a complaint to a regulator — and is defeated only by malice.
Fair comment protects honest opinion on a matter of public interest, provided it is recognisable as comment and rests on facts that are true and either stated or known. Responsible communication on matters of public interest protects reporting that was diligent even if it turns out to be wrong. Consent is also a defence, including where you invited the statement.
A prompt apology and retraction will not defeat a claim, but it can reduce damages significantly — and it very often achieves the thing you actually wanted faster than a lawsuit would.
For a libel in a newspaper or in a broadcast, the Libel and Slander Act requires written notice to the defendant within six weeks of the libel coming to your knowledge, specifying the matter complained of, and requires the action itself to be started within three months. Miss the notice and the claim is over on a point that has nothing to do with the merits.
Those rules apply to newspapers printed and published in Ontario and to broadcasts from a station in Ontario, and Ontario courts have applied them to a newspaper's online edition. An ordinary social media post by an individual generally falls outside the Act, leaving the two-year period under the Limitations Act, 2002.
The line between the two is genuinely contested, particularly for online publishers who are not obviously newspapers or broadcasters. The safe course is to treat the six-week clock as running from the day you learned of the statement. Send notice, then take your time deciding whether to sue.
Section 137.1 of the Courts of Justice Act allows a defendant to move to dismiss a claim arising from expression on a matter of public interest. Bringing that motion stays the entire proceeding while it is decided, which alone can consume a year.
The burden then lands on you. You must show the claim has substantial merit, that the defendant has no valid defence, and that the harm you have suffered is serious enough to outweigh the public interest in protecting the expression.
If the motion succeeds, an award of costs against you on a full indemnity basis is the presumptive outcome. Reviews of businesses, posts in community groups, and complaints made to authorities are all territory where this applies. Anyone advising you to sue over online criticism without addressing section 137.1 first is not advising you properly.
Sometimes, but suing over one is often a poor decision. A review stating verifiable facts that are false can be defamatory; a review expressing an honest opinion on a matter of public interest, based on facts, is likely protected as fair comment. Consumer reviews of businesses are prime anti-SLAPP territory, and losing that motion means paying the reviewer's full legal costs.
No. Once you establish that the words were defamatory, referred to you and were published, falsity and damage are presumed. It is for the defendant to prove the statement was substantially true or that another defence applies. That does not make the claim easy, but it does put the evidentiary burden on the right side.
Rarely before trial. Courts are very reluctant to restrain publication in advance and will only do so in the clearest cases, because prior restraint on expression is treated as exceptional. In practice a retraction demand, or the platform's own reporting process, is more likely to get content removed than a court order is.
You can ask the court to order a platform or internet provider to disclose identifying information, but it is a separate proceeding with its own cost, the information available is often thin, and the person behind the account may have nothing worth suing for. Weigh that cost before treating unmasking as a first step.
General damages are presumed but in most private disputes they are modest. Higher awards follow serious, widely published attacks, and aggravated or punitive damages become available where the defendant's conduct was malicious or the defence was pressed unreasonably. For most people the cost of the proceeding exceeds any realistic award, which is why the objective — correction, retraction, removal — should drive the strategy.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.