Birth announcement: Ontario court is reluctant parent of new tort of 'internet harassment'

UNESCO image CC BY-SA 4.0

The tort world is abuzz with a court decision in Ontario that has birthed a new common law cause of action for online harassment.

The facts that gave rise to the case were extreme.  The defendant was the subject of a New York Times story (subscription) on January 30 about the difficulty of remediating online reputational harm.  The perpetrator of the harassment targeted some 150 victims, including children, spat accusations ranging from fraud to pedophilia, and was adjudged a vexatious litigant and jailed for contempt of court.  Floundering in a dearth of effective enforcement mechanisms, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (para. 171) recognized a "tort of harassment in internet communications" that means to be narrow:

where the defendant maliciously or recklessly engages in communications conduct so outrageous in character, duration, and extreme in degree, so as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency and tolerance, with the intent to cause fear, anxiety, emotional upset or to impugn the dignity of the plaintiff, and the plaintiff suffers such harm.

The case is Caplan v. Atas, 2021 ONSC 670 (Ont. Super. Ct. Jan. 28, 2021).  Jennifer McKenzie and Amanda Branch at Bereskin & Parr have commentary.  Hat tip to Dan Greenberg for bringing the New York Times story to my attention.