In the Superior Court of Justice matter of Jones v. I.F. Propco Holdings (Ontario) 31 Ltd., the defendant sought an order for production of the plaintiff’s private profile information including profile posts and comments.
The action arose out of an alleged incident in which the plaintiff claims that she was hit in the head by ice that fell from the defendant’s property. The plaintiff was seeking general and special damages arising from the injuries sustained in the incident.
The defendant’s position was that relevant conduct pertaining to the plaintiff’s social, family, leisure, and volunteer activities revealed on the public portion of her Facebook leads to an inference that there is relevant information on the private portion of her Facebook profile.
Justice Leitch cited the case of Knox v. Applebaum and indicated that “There must be evidence that posted photographs are relevant in order to justify an order for production.” Justice Leitch stated that relevant information on the public portion of a Facebook profile does support the inference that relevant information is contained on the private portion of the profile.
Justice Leitch concluded that there was no evidence that the public posts are relevant because the activities depicted in the photographs are not relevant to the extent of the plaintiff’s physical limitations since the incident. Therefore, because the information on the public portion was not relevant, there is no inference that the information on the private portion would be relevant. Since there was no inference that it was relevant, Justice Leitch did not assess the privacy interests of the plaintiff against any probative value obtained from the disclosure of the private portion of the plaintiff’s profile.
