On July 7th the Court of Appeal for Ontario held that a limitation period for an online publication runs from the date of discovery despite continued online publication. It explained:
The appellant seeks to rely on an incorrect interpretation of the “multiple publication rule”. That concept provides that when an alleged libel is republished across different mediums, including the Internet, those republications are treated as distinct libels. In Shtaif, the court rejected the notion that the limitation period for a suit about an online magazine article starts to run when the plaintiff becomes aware of the printed version. This was the basis for the conflicting evidence on discoverability in Shtaif. This decision does not mean that each day of online publication grounds a new cause of action. The court in Vachon v. Canada Revenue Agency, 2015 ONSC 6096 (CanLII), expressly rejected this interpretation of Shtaif. I concur with Hackland J., who said, at para. 22:
The plaintiff argues that the alleged defamation should be taken as having been republished every day [while it] remained accessible on the internet … Shtaif does not support that proposition … any limitation period based on discoverability will run from the point where the internet defamation is discovered.
The time by which the plaintiff must give notice under s. 5(1) and bring his action under s. 6 begins to run when the libel has come to the knowledge of the person defamed. There is no dispute here that, on December 5, 2013, when the appellant submitted the “factual error” message, he was aware of the facts on which his cause of action might be founded. He was aware of the statements, took exception to them as inaccurate, and demanded a correction. The clock began to run on December 5, 2013, when the appellant knew that statements were made that might be considered libellous.
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