What is the test for a defence of responsible communication?

Ontario, Canada


The following excerpt is from Sikhs for Justice v. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute, 2021 ONSC 7063 (CanLII):

The Court of Appeal in Subway goes on, at paras. 55-57, to further describe the nature of the inquiry at this stage: Given the early stage of the proceeding, that damage assessment can be an ongoing process, and that such motions are meant to weed out clearly defective claims, there is only a limited assessment of the evidence from the motion judge’s perspective. If the motion record raises serious credibility issues or inferences to be drawn from competing primary facts, the motion judge must avoid taking a “deep dive” into the ultimate merits and instead, engage in a much more limited analysis. [Citations omitted]. A determination that a defence ‘could go either way’ in the sense that a reasonable trier could accept or reject it, is a finding that a reasonable trier could reject the defence. [Citation omitted]. As Cavanaugh J. so aptly put it: ‘Where a trier could reasonably conclude that the defendants did not conduct a sufficiently diligent investigation…a trier could reasonably conclude that the defence of responsible communication would not succeed’: Hamlin v. Kavanaugh, 2019 ONSC 5552, at para. 45.

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