Love Thy Brother ... Or The Courts May Award Damages

With the release of the decision in Sagman v Politi by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last week, came a stern caution to those who may be tempted to use websites to damage reputations. The case involved three brothers. The Plaintiffs, Uri Sagman (Uri) and Doron Sagman (Doron) are, respectively, a medical doctor and a business executive. Uri founded or co-founded several well-recognized companies innovating advanced medical technologies, and Doron is a Vice-President of Eli Lilly Canada, a major pharmaceutical company. The Defendant Paul Politi (Politi), aka Saul Sagman, had owned and controlled several technology companies, including Tucows Inc. At the time of the judgment, Politi was an adjudged bankrupt and he did not defend the motion. The three brothers had been embroiled in a bitter estate dispute when Politi vowed to “crush” his brothers. In an apparent attempt to make good on that promise, Politi registered and hosted two websites “urisagman.com” and “doronsagman.com”, on which he posted allegations which were found to have been designed to damage the Plaintiffs’ personal and professional reputations. The websites were live for about three months; each site alleged that its namesake was responsible for fraud, theft and falsification of documents, and that they had been convicted of various crimes; moreover, Politi wrote that the Plaintiffs “could not be trusted as doctors”. The evidence confirmed that all allegations were entirely false. Politi also lodged a false complaint against Uri with the College of Physicians and Surgeons in which he requested the revocation of Uri’s licence to practice medicine. The College ruled that an investigation was not warranted, and took no further action. Further, Politi posted a review of Doron on a website that ranks doctors. The comments stated that Doron “cannot be trusted as a doctor” and linked to “doronsagman.com”. Later, the ranking was downgraded to ‘very bad’. Not surprisingly, the evidence at trial confirmed that the Plaintiffs suffered damage to their personal and professional reputations. Justice Morgan noted that the name choice of the URLs (‘urisagman.com’ and ‘doronsagman.com’) was of particular concern given that such names contributed to the illusion that their namesakes had created the sites. The Court made an award of $300,000 in general damages, $50,000 in punitive damages, and costs which, given the personal bankruptcy of the Defendant, will no doubt be a challenge to realize. Summary by: Jennifer R Davidson