Our Work

Our firm acts for Diverse Transportation in its defamation claim against a former employee, the defendant Mr. Chen. Upon leaving the company, Mr. Chen demanded money from Diverse and threatened to send defamatory communications about Diverse's business practices to its key customers if he was not paid. When Diverse did not accede to his demands, he followed through on his threats.

Gord McGuire, Cameron Rempel, Katie Glowach, and Jacqueline Houston successfully defended Mr. Chen's anti-SLAPP motion, which sought to dismiss Diverse's defamation claim on the basis that the proceeding arises from expression relating to a matter of public interest. Our lawyers also successfully defended the dismissal of Mr. Chen's appeal from the dismissal of his anti-SLAPP motion at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. 

With choice words analogizing Mr. Chen's conduct to blackmail and characterizing his allegations as "entirely a product of Mr. Chen's imagination", the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed the motion. In doing so, Justice Morgan found that Mr. Chen's bad faith conduct nullified any public interest in his various statements, and concluded that "Diverse will have no trouble at all in meeting its burden to prove that Mr. Chen's statements about it are false, indefensible, and harmful to its business operations."

In subsequent reasons, the Court awarded our clients $50,000 in costs on this motion, a rare result given the presumption that plaintiffs do not receive costs for successfully defending anti-SLAPP motions. This figure further represented an elevated award above partial indemnity costs, approaching our client's substantial indemnity costs. 

Mr. Chen then appealed both the dismissal of his anti-SLAPP motion to the Court of Appeal for Ontario and sought leave to appeal the $50,000 cost award against him. Mr. Chen argued, among other things, that Justice Morgan’s characterization that his impugned statements were really about his private employment dispute with Diverse, as opposed to any matter of public interest, constituted an erroneous consideration of Mr. Chen’s motive at the public interest threshold stage of the anti-SLAPP test.  

Our lawyers successfully defended this appeal, securing a further award of $15,000 in costs for our clients in the process. 

With the anti-SLAPP motion dismissed, our firm continues to represent Diverse Transportation in its defamation action against Mr. Chen.