{"id":38130,"date":"2017-09-13T17:12:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T17:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/immigrationca.staging.wpengine.com\/canada-immigration-lawyer-colin-singer-wins-online-defamation-ruling-anonymous-defendants\/"},"modified":"2017-09-13T17:15:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T17:15:54","slug":"canada-immigration-lawyer-colin-singer-wins-online-defamation-ruling-anonymous-defendants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/canada-immigration-lawyer-colin-singer-wins-online-defamation-ruling-anonymous-defendants\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada Immigration Lawyer Colin Singer Wins Online Defamation Ruling Against Anonymous Defendants"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 14, 2017 – The Quebec Superior Court granted a permanent injunction and awarded damages in a first-time defamation based ruling<\/a> in the province, against anonymous \u201cJohn Doe\u201d online posters.\u00a0 In its ruling, the court held that five individual online internet postings created by fictitious users were unlawful and defamed the reputation of lawyer Colin Singer, an immigration lawyer in Canada and Managing Partner of www.immigration.ca.<\/p>\n

In some instances, the internet posters chose pseudonyms of Singer\u2019s name to post fabricated, defamatory statements about his immigration practice.\u00a0 The court accepted submissions that the postings in question could not be admitted as legitimate criticisms or expressions of opinions made in good faith, and were beyond the limits of freedom of speech.\u00a0 The court also accepted the submission that the posts\u2019 sole objective was to intentionally harm Singer\u2019s reputation as well as his online personae, immigration.ca, and therefore did not consist of a case where the poster\u2019s right to anonymous comment was worthy of protection.\u00a0 The court endorsed the established principle that a lawyer\u2019s reputation is of paramount importance.<\/p>\n

The court heard that since 1994, Mr. Singer conducts his law practice through immigration.ca, an established contributor of online written content on immigration matters in Canada, reaching a worldwide clientele.<\/p>\n

The practice of issuing a permanent injunction against anonymous or \u201cJohn Doe\u201d defendants is controversial in many jurisdictions.\u00a0 A defendant whose name is unknown may be sued, under a fictitious name, in certain circumstances, with special permission of the court.\u00a0 The judgment condemned each defendant to pay $2,500 in damages.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are aware some competitors in the Canadian immigration industry are prepared to engage in unlawful activities to try and harm our success\u201d, said Singer. \u201cI am pleased that my reputation has been vindicated through this strong ruling\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a>, to read the full judgment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 14, 2017 – The Quebec Superior Court granted a permanent injunction and awarded damages in a first-time defamation based ruling in the province, against anonymous \u201cJohn Doe\u201d online posters.\u00a0 In its ruling, the court held that five individual online internet postings created by fictitious users were unlawful and defamed the reputation of lawyer Colin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":481,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3416],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-immigration-wiki","category-3416","description-off"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/481"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/immigration.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}