Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Here is another cheery story to warm the hearts of those who hear that 1960’s Coca-cola ad about teaching the world to sing when they turn on the internet in the morning [from The Star]:

Relying on a long list of legal precedents, the Post’s lawyers brought a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds the case had no “real or substantial connection” to Ontario. Bangoura had little or no reputation in Ontario because he did not live here when the stories were published and the reporters who worked on the story were based in the U.S., Kenya and Ivory Coast. If Bangoura’s lawsuit were allowed to proceed simply because the stories had been accessible in Ontario through the Internet, it would mean that publishers worldwide would face the prospect of being dragged into other countries’ courts for libel, no matter how remote their connection to the country might be, the [Washington] Post argued. That would encourage “forum shopping” by libel plaintiffs and have a devastating impact on freedom of expression, the newspaper argued. Its lawyers, however, were not able to persuade Superior Court Justice Romain Pitt, who called the Post a major international newspaper “spoken of in the same breath as The New York Times and London Tel(e)graph,” [Ed.: really, brother, missing that “e”] whose writers influence viewpoints throughout the English-speaking world. The Post should have foreseen fallout from the stories would have followed Bangoura wherever he lived, Pitt said in a decision last year, allowing the lawsuit to proceed to trial. The Post appealed.

So you see how that works. The Washington Post is available world wide via the internet and access to the on-line version paper that embarrasses in the legal sense is enough to land that web site’s owner a court case anywhere anyone can read it as opposed to where it is published. The prospect of being libelled in the most libel-finding-friendly jurisdiction or the most libel-damages-friendly jusrisdiction arises. But then why not? Should it be where the most part of the experience of the offence occurs? Should it not be where the person offended lives? If this principle is established, it won’t be limited to on-line newspapers, either.

It all reminds me of the glorious days of first year law school contracts class and the rapt fascination we all had encountering the telex case and the question of where the contract existed for substantive and procedural jurisdiction. I can still recall the sound of that fly buzzing in the florescent lights above the 41 daydreaming heads…