Montreal, October 17, 2008 – The Québec Court of Appeal just released today its judgment in the case of Diffusion Métromédia CMR Inc and André Arthur v. Farès Bou Malhab and granted the appeal from the decision of the trial judge.

Davies, with a team made up of David Stolow, Nick Rodrigo and Louis-Martin O'Neill successfully represented the appellants.

The case involved a group defamation class-action launched on behalf of a group of taxi drivers in Montreal based on their claims that certain statements made by André Arthur during one of his radio shows was defamatory to taxi drivers in Montreal.  The trial judge upheld this claim and awarded the plaintiffs $220,000 in moral damages despite the fact that there was no evidence that the 11 members of the group who testified at trial, let alone the 1089 of the members who did not, suffered any damages.  A majority of the Court of Appeal held that there was no defamation of any member of the group.  The majority held that the comments in question did not infringe on the reputation of any individual member of the group and that to accept the principle in this case that comments that only targeted a group and not its individual members could give rise to an action in damages on behalf of these individuals would seriously undermine the right to freedom of expression.

Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP is an integrated firm of more than 250 lawyers with offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York and an affiliate in Paris. The firm is focused on business law and is consistently at the heart of the largest and most complex commercial and financial matters on behalf of its clients, regardless of borders.

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