Amin Massoudi’s libel action over a 2013 VICE article can proceed after the Court of Appeal for Ontario set aside its dismissal. The defendants sought to rely on a three-month deadline for suing a newspaper, but the website materials in evidence did not name the company that published the article.
In Massoudi v. Vice Media LLC, 2026 ONCA 771, Justice Gomery, writing for a unanimous panel, upheld the finding that the online publication met the geographic requirement in Ontario’s Libel and Slander Act. The appeal turned on a separate condition that allows readers to identify the publisher against whom they might bring a claim.
Massoudi was communications director and press secretary to then-Toronto mayor Rob Ford. The article accused him of hiring a hacker. He denied the allegation in an email to the reporter and a VICE editor within hours of publication. He sued just over four months later, initially naming the global company, the reporter and his anonymous source. The parties later agreed to add the Canadian company as a defendant.
A Toronto story on a Virginia server
The Act generally requires a person alleging libel in a qualifying newspaper to give written notice within six weeks of learning of the alleged libel and to start an action within three months. To invoke those deadlines, defendants must show that the newspaper was printed and published in Ontario and that it met the Act’s requirements for identifying who was responsible for publication.
Massoudi accepted on appeal that the online edition qualified as a newspaper and that the article was published in Ontario. He argued that it was printed in Virginia because that was where the server housed the data. The court held that, on these facts, the place of printing was the place of publication. A Toronto journalist wrote the story in Toronto about the city’s mayor, drawing on a local source. Ontario accounted for the largest number of page views. The court distinguished those connections from the mere ability to access a website in the province.
What the masthead told readers
The motion judge concluded that Canadian editorial staff and a Toronto office address on a linked “About Us” page sufficiently identified Vice Media Canada Inc. as the publisher. Justice Gomery observed that the page named an individual as publisher, while the Canadian company’s name appeared nowhere in the website excerpts. The masthead directed readers to send letters to New York.
An “About Us” page could be a suitable place to identify a publisher, the court said. And where one company is both publisher and proprietor, naming it once can suffice. The problem here was that readers lacked a clear identification of the company in any prominent location. Massoudi’s prompt objection did not show that he knew who the publisher was. His email described VICE as a U.S. website, and his original claim omitted the Canadian company.
The court awarded Massoudi $42,000 in all-inclusive partial indemnity costs for the appeal. It directed the parties to file submissions within 30 days if they could not agree on costs for the summary judgment motion. The ruling allows the libel claim to go forward, leaving liability to be determined.
