A woman who made disparaging comments about her landlord on her Internet blog has become the latest person to discover what can happen when cyberspace and legal realities collide.
Sarah Dawe is facing eviction for her postings related to an ongoing dispute with Homestead Land Holdings Inc.
Ms. Dawe says she was stunned to find herself on the receiving end of such an action.
“When I got the (eviction) notice, I went into a panic, I couldn't eat or sleep for four days,” said Ms. Dawe who is fighting the eviction order.
“Blogs are personal diaries. Anyone can read them, but with mine, except for people trolling or spamming, I was probably the only one reading it.”
Whatever the readership, libel lawyers and technology watchers say as more people use the Internet, the number of people getting in trouble for electronic words whether on websites and blogs, e-mails or electronic bulletin boards is also rising.
A train driver with Via Rail resigned from his job of 30 years after the company gathered postings he made to a satirical magazine's website over a three-month period — on his own time with his own computer — and began dismissal proceedings against him.
A stay-at-home mother in Waterloo, Ont., was slapped with a $2-million libel suit from a property developer after she posted pictures of what she said were unsafe construction practices at a development near her home.
And just last month, a Saskatchewan math professor who anonymously skewered his colleagues on a popular site allowing students to rate their professors lost a bid to get his job back after being fired for those comments.
The technology may be new but the law isn't.
“It's as though this person was putting up flyers or putting them under people's doors,” said Toronto lawyer David Potts, who specializes in the fast-growing field known as “cyberlibel.”
“It seems new because it's out in the ether, but cyberlibel is just a form of information warfare.”
Marc-Andre Blanchard of Gowling Lafleur Henderson said such cases are more prevalent, particularly in labour law, where collective agreements may make it difficult for a company to sue an employee they consider to be slandering them.
But that doesn't prevent disciplinary action.
“It's more and more common in labour relations,” Mr. Blanchard said, noting that many of the cases go unpublicized because the processes are rarely public.
However, he said firing an employee based on their Internet postings on their own time is “extraordinary.”
The Via Rail driver was Dan Christie of Port Hope, Ont., a self-identified “whistleblower” who, between March 1 and May 15, 2004, wrote about turmoil inside Via Rail under a pseudonym on the Frank Magazine website.
At the time, Via was being rocked by its role in the sponsorship scandal and its president had publicly denigrated Olympian Miriam Bedard.
Mr. Christie wrote about the turmoil within the corporation and what he felt was its mismanagement.
The company ordered him to provide a “formal employee statement” about his comments.
Mr. Christie, who had 30 years on the job, chose to resign rather than fight a protracted disciplinary action.
“For anyone seeing this stuff from within Via, it was a fantastic waste of money,” he said of his motives.
“We were working for a Crown corporation, a de facto arm of the government, and do we not have a chance to complain about how our tax dollars are being spent, even if they're being spent on us?”
He said he knew he was being provocative, but said none of his Internet comments contained anything that could be deemed illegal, such as exhorting people to commit illegal acts.
“I was venting the frustration of people who were working there and who were not being able to serve the public the way we wanted to,” he said.
