Ontario Court Awards $10,000 in Damages for Invasion of Privacy

In McIntosh v Legal Aid Ontario, 2014 ONSC 6136, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Court) awarded plaintiff Patrice McIntosh $10,000 in damages resulting from the disclosure of confidential information in her Legal Aid Ontario case file. Defendant Cassandra Reddick, a Legal Aid Ontario employee and girlfriend of McIntosh’s former boyfriend, improperly accessed McIntosh’s Legal Aid Ontario case file, threatened McIntosh that she would call the Children’s Aid Society in an effort to have McIntosh’s children taken away from her, and then proceeded to call the Children’s Aid Society. McIntosh sued Legal Aid Ontario and Reddick, but the action against Legal Aid Ontario was dismissed. In her claim, McIntosh alleged that the breach of privacy caused “substantial anxiety, emotion [sic] upset, depression, significant stress, embarrassment, weight loss, insomnia, isolation, and an inability to concentrate at work”, but there was no evidence to substantiate her health-related and pecuniary claims. Justice Cornell of the Court held that there was “no doubt” that Defendant’s actions breached McIntosh’s privacy interests, finding that she intentionally intruded into McIntosh’s private affairs and that that intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. In assessing damages, he concluded that the intrusion had a minor effect on McIntosh’s emotional state but caused a “measure of annoyance, anxiety and distress”, and went on to award McIntosh $10,000 in general damages and $6,500 in costs. The Court’s damages award is consistent with the Court’s 2012 ruling in Jones v Tsige (reported in E-Tips® here), in which the Court also awarded $10,000 in damages and fixed an upper limit of damages to $20,000. Summary by: Darren Hall