There’s a blurb below about a great session held at this past year’s Symposium. The topic, discussed by the panelists (and in the article), is the newest expansion of the tort of invasion of privacy by the Ontario courts.

In four provinces, the legislatures have prescribed what the tort of invasion of privacy looks like. But Ontario is not one of them and that meant that if there was going to be legal protection for privacy invasions that weren’t covered by PIPEDA, then it would be left to courageous litigants (and their lawyers).

There are still a fair number of black holes, where individuals’ privacy rights aren’t protected, but because of the court’s involvement over the past few years, the tort of invasion of privacy now covers the unreasonable snooping into private affairs (thanks to Jones v. Tsige) and the unreasonable publication of private information (thanks to the Jane Doe case mentioned in the article). Also worth noting is that while the court capped damages in the intrusion upon seclusion case to $20,000, there was no cap in the revenge porn case in which the defendant was ultimately responsible to pay roughly $140,000 in compensation.

It's unfortunate that it took a revenge porn case to advance privacy law. And, to think that the defendant in that case actually went to trial. But, at least it serves a small step in the right direction in terms of protecting privacy. After all, it’s still worth something, isn’t it?