2016 BCSC 686 Pritchard v. Van Nes deals with an Abbotsford Facebook defamation case.

Briefly, neighbours were not getting along and the one neighbour took it upon themselves to air their grievance on Facebook with some posts suggesting pedophile tendencies. The plaintiff was a teacher and the Facebook commentary ended up with his school.

Just awful. Damages were awarded in the amount of $65,000.00. Given the facts, though, how would that help? Social media is a powerful tool that can ruin an individual at the press of a button. I’m not entirely sure that defamation law is keeping up with technology. Even in the days of radio/television (compared to Gutenburg’s press) not everyone would watch or listen to a program and the content would disappear with the broadcast. Now you have a permanent tablet that you can’t purge, get rid of or hide and that everyone feels compelled to check up on every two hours.