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Complaints - Defamation. Luoy v. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
In Luoy v. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (Ont CA, 2025) the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal, here against orders that "struck out various pleadings relating to defamation and libel".
The court enumerates some documents that were not defamatory, here in a regulatory/investigative context:[2] .... As part of that investigation, CIBC reported the client complaint to the regulator, the Enforcement Department of the New Self-Regulatory Organization of Canada (the “New SRO”).
[3] The appellant pleaded that various documents contained defamatory statements. These documents are: (1) a March 31, 2023 letter from the New SRO to CIBC Securities advising that it was commencing an investigation; (2) a Member Events Tracking System (“METS”) report that CIBC Securities sent to the New SRO as part of the investigation; and (3) a Microsoft Teams chat between the appellant and a CIBC employee.
[4] The motion judge held that neither the letter from the New SRO nor the METS report contained the alleged defamatory statements. Further, even if the letter from the New SRO did contain defamatory statements, these were not published by the respondents. The Microsoft Teams chat could not be considered a publication within the meaning of the elements of defamation. Accordingly, the motion judge struck out various pleadings relating to defamation and libel.
[5] The motion judge struck paragraph 60 of the pleadings as “scandalous, frivolous or vexatious”. She did not grant leave to amend the pleadings because additional facts could not make the defamation claim tenable. The motion judge declined to award costs to either party.
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[7] We see no error in the motion judge’s analysis of the documents alleged to contain defamatory statements. ....
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