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.

Gordon 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.

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.