Liwayway Miranda v. Balita Media Inc. et al., 2025 ONSC 2331
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
BETWEEN:
LIWAYWAY MIRANDA
Plaintiff
– and –
BALITA MEDIA INC. (BALITA NEWSPAPER) and TERESITA "TESS" CUSIPAG
Defendants
Mohsen Seddigh and Maria Arabella Robles, for the Plaintiff
Dominador Saludares, for the Defendants
HEARD: March 4 and 5, 2025
AKAZAKI J.
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
OVERVIEW
1Driven by a crusade to rid the Filipino community in Canada of “scammers”, preying on hopeful migrant workers, Teresita Cusipag operates Balita Newspaper. It is a “newspaper” for the broad definition in the Libel and Slander Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 1. Balita published false exposés about Liwayway “Lily” Miranda, intentionally damaging her reputation to prevent her from restarting her employment recruitment agency.
2Balita’s campaign against Ms. Miranda began with a February 2020 report of a community meeting penned by Ms. Cusipag with the headline, “IWAS SCAM, Elite Crusaders to help.” It cited one of the speakers, “a well-known paralegal … aiming for the bar” who described:
one immigration exploiters [sic] that he rates as the summa cum laude of all the scammers here in the community. … The scammer lady according to the speaker started a cleaning business, contracting different lawyers to obviously start her racket again.
3Ms. Cusipag later identified the “scammer lady” in a Facebook post as “LIWAYWAY MIRANDA HAMMER.”
4Undeterred by the first of two libel notices from Ms. Miranda’s lawyers, it seems Ms. Cusipag had only begun her campaign. On December 18, 2022, Balita identified Ms. Miranda and her accuser by name:
Meanwhile, another notorious alleged scammer is Liwayway Miranda Hammer who up to this time is still hunted by victims to serve court documents.
Liwayway was branded as the summa cum laude of scammers in Toronto according to paralegal, soon to be a practicing lawyer Jun Saludares.
Saludares won several of the court cases against Liwayway and they are just waiting for courts to open to collect judgements.
Saludares is one of the defamation victims of Lily Hammer together with Chito Collantes of CWSS and Balita newspaper.
If Naomi has 47 victims’ testimonies on hand, Lily Hammer has hundreds and we now lost counts and are still coming. We calculated millions of dollars collected from applicants all over the world and are now asking for refunds and to get justice.
This is a clear case of greed as farmers would ask for 20 people to employ. Recruitment then would be opened around the world. So, the 20 with a certified LMIA arrived here but the others were just taken for a ride.
Victim applicants paid but nothing was done, and all they got were promises and then later, they would be blocked and no more communication with Hammer.
5Ms. Cusipag reposted the article on her personal Facebook Page. She has thousands of followers. Facebook is the main source of communication in the Filipino-Canadian community. Most of the posts are in Tagalog, which the court reviewed in translation. She also published random commentary about Ms. Miranda, accusing her of distributing “reject ham and sausages to the people in violation of the Ministry of Health instructions” and declaring, in all-caps: “JUST GET LAID TO EARN MONEY.” During the trial, Ms. Cusipag did not deny the defamatory social media publications. Instead, she complained that the plaintiff provoked her in other posts, allegedly by Ms. Miranda. Her counsel did not put those into evidence.
6It turned out that the only source of her information was the paralegal, Mr. Saludares – the same Mr. Saludares who, now a lawyer, represented her and Balita at trial. When I asked him what he had understood by the words “summa cum laude of scammers,” he professed it meant something more measured. He referred to the recruitment agency’s collection of fees from migrant workers, contrary to the Employment Protection for Foreign Nationals Act, 2009, S.O. 2009, c. 32 (EPFNA). He claimed that his words offered fair comment based on Small Claims Court decisions requiring Ms. Miranda and her company to repay the workers. Even if the outcome of those cases were correct, they did not permit him or the defendants to portray Ms. Miranda’s recruitment business as a vast operation defrauding hopeful migrant workers of millions of dollars. Although the original article is not actionable because of the limitation issue, the word “racket” can be used to interpret “scammer” as meaning a dishonest scheme.
7As will be explained below, the recruitment agency collected funds from workers as agents for employers to cover the cost of obtaining work permits – a charge the employers were permitted to collect under the EPFNA. Her business provided housing and other local services to the workers, on behalf of the employers. In 2018, the Canada Border Services Agency abruptly closed her business. They arrested her for human trafficking and froze her and her business’ bank accounts. The CBSA eventually withdrew the charges, but not before the landlord locked the business out and evicted it because of vandalism and inability to pay rent. During that time, Ms. Miranda’s business could do nothing for those who had paid for processing work permits and could not refund their money.
8In defence of the libel suit, the defendants pleaded justification and responsible reporting of a public interest issue. Although not evident in the statement of defence apart from their denial of libel, counsel for the defendants also argued that identifying Ms. Miranda as a “scammer” defrauding community members of millions was not defamatory. Finally, they relied on the limitation period for newspapers under the Libel and Slander Act, as barring liability for the 2020 publications.
9The words written and published by Ms. Cusipag in Balita unquestionably defamed Ms. Miranda. The defendants established none of the pleaded defences. For the reasons that follow, the defendants are liable to pay Ms. Miranda damages for the effect on her reputation and punitive damages for defying the libel notices and intentionally carrying on the campaign to inflict further harm. Although the action is statute-barred for the original newspaper publications, the plaintiff followed the notice requirements and brought the suit in time, to claim damages for the republications in December 2022. The statute provided no insulation from liability for Ms. Cusipag’s Facebook posts.
10The trial of this action raised six issues:
Requirements of a libel action
Justification (truth as a defence to libel)
Privilege, Responsible Reporting, and Fair Comment
Limitations Defence
General Damages
Punitive damages
11Before I turn to these points, I will provide further background.
BACKGROUND: CBSA HUMAN TRAFFICKING CHARGES
12Ms. Miranda arrived in Canada in 2009 as a domestic caregiver. In 2014, she married Allen Hammer. Later that year, she incorporated A & L Hammer Workforce Management Inc., a business recruiting seasonal workers for Ontario employers. The only such business of which the court heard evidence was Sharon Mushroom Farm, operated by Mr. Hammer. The agency recruited workers in the Philippines for employers such as the mushroom farm. On behalf of the employers, it arranged the workers’ travel and hired a lawyer to apply for the work permits. It also arranged the workers’ housing and meals.
13In 2009, the Ontario government enacted the EPFNA to regulate recruitment of foreign migrant workers. Recruitment companies are not permitted to charge the foreign workers for their services. They can act only as agents for employers. Employers cannot recover recruitment costs from the foreign workers except as specified under s. 8(2) and O. Reg. 348/15: namely, the cost of air travel and work permits. Despite (or consistent with) the findings of Small Claims Court judgments in the suits brought by Mr. Saludares, the relationship between A & L Hammer and the mushroom farm made it obvious that Ms. Miranda’s agency provided recruitment and employment-related services for the employer.
14In April 2018, six seasonal workers recruited by A & L Hammer complained to the CBSA. The nature of their complaints is unknown. The CBSA arrested Ms. Miranda and laid charges against her and the Sharon Mushroom Farm, for human trafficking under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27. Subsection 118(1) makes it a criminal offence to organize the coming to Canada of persons by means of abduction, fraud, deception or use or threat of force or coercion.
15Federal prosecutors obtained freezing orders against Ms. Miranda and her recruitment agency’s bank accounts. After news of the arrests spread, unknown individuals broke into the A & L Hammer office and vandalized it with graffiti. The landlord locked her and her staff out and demanded payment for the damage as a condition of re-entry. Since the accounts were frozen, the landlord proceeded to evict the business for unpaid rent. These events combined to strand numerous in-process permit applications, to leave the agency no means to refund monies, and later to block access to records needed to defend lawsuits from upset recruits.
16Several seasonal workers, represented by Mr. Saludares as a paralegal, sued Ms. Miranda, A & L Hammer, and others in Small Claims Court for recovery of payments made to the agency for which they were unable to land work in Canada. In one suit, five out of eight plaintiffs recovered judgment against Ms. Miranda. Ms. Miranda did not defend several other Small Claims Court suits, and the plaintiffs eventually obtained default judgment against her.
17On December 11, 2019, the Crown withdrew all charges, and the court stayed the proceedings. The Toronto Star report of the same date quoted Mr. Saludares as having informed the reporter that his Small Claims Court clients were not among the complainants in the CBSA charges. Ms. Miranda did not blame CBSA for her plight and implied that the agents and prosecutors were only acting in their duty to protect the public. At trial, she gave her evidence with dignity and restraint.
18I offer no comment about the charges. The fact that they were dropped speaks for itself. I do wish to explain that the charges were the very opposite of the allegations by Mr. Saludares’ clients and by Balita that Ms. Miranda and her company defrauded people hoping to come to Canada or to bring their family members here by taking their money and not providing immigration services. In contrast, human trafficking entails offences against people who are brought to Canada against their will or in circumstances where their freedom while in Canada is restrained.
19The evidence from the two A & L Hammer recruits who testified at trial proved that the business was entirely legitimate. Even the testimony that they did not personally retain the immigration lawyer was consistent with the agency hiring the lawyer on behalf of the mushroom farm. It also proved that if the CBSA had not shut down A & L Hammer, the work permit applications for Mr. Saludares’ clients would have been completed, and they would have obtained the outcome they expected for the funds received by A & L Hammer to defray the cost of obtaining the permits.
20The defendants did not seriously contest Ms. Miranda’s evidence about the devastating effect of the CBSA charges on her life, her business, and her immigration status as an applicant for permanent residency. The only thing the charges did not fully ruin was the PR application. Until the trial of this action, the truth of Ms. Miranda’s experience of being pilloried by the CBSA charges and the court of public opinion never saw the light of day.
21I will now turn to the six issues.
1. REQUIREMENTS OF A LIBEL ACTION
22As stated in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Bent v. Platnick, 2020 SCC 23, [2020] 2 SCR 645, at para. 92, a libel action is based on written communication and requires proof of three elements:
publication, by communication to one or more persons other than the plaintiff
reference to the plaintiff
defamatory meaning, in that the words would tend to lower the plaintiff’s reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person
23The first two elements were obviously beyond dispute. I need not cite a dictionary to find that referring to Ms. Miranda as a “scammer” bore the meaning that she was a fraudster or a swindler. In the articles and social media posts, the defendants and their lawyer accused her of having collected millions of dollars by defrauding Philippine nationals seeking work placements and a path to Canadian residency. The articles and posts clearly bore defamatory meanings.
24The defendants advanced a half-hearted submission that “scammer” might have a meaning with a lesser sting, if one considers the court rulings that Ms. Miranda and her agency were providing services to migrant workers that they were not permitted to provide. As discussed below, provincial legislation prohibits charging workers for their services. However, they are not prohibited from acting as the employers’ agents to recover the cost of work permits. I do not accept that any reasonable person would read words like “scammer” and would consider it in a measured way as referring to someone who has charged for a cost or for a service contrary to a statute or regulation. As discussed in the next sections, even the meaning with less sting was false and defamatory.
25Ms. Miranda has established a prima facie case in libel. What remains to be decided are the defendants’ affirmative defences and the plaintiff’s damages.
2. JUSTIFICATION (TRUTH AS A DEFENCE TO LIBEL)
26I need not comment on the withdrawn human trafficking charges. Under s. 11(d) of the Charter, Ms. Miranda is presumed innocent. The law of libel also presumes the falsity of a defamatory writing and requires the publisher to prove it was true.
27In paragraph 9 of the statement of defence, the defendants alleged Ms. Miranda’s motivation for the suit as follows (underline added):
Stated otherwise, the Plaintiff's claim was instituted by the latter to serve as an escape goat [sic] or use the same in hope to clean her already tainted reputation so she can perpetuate her business, but in truth and in fact, a lot of monies were collected by the Plaintiff from different innocent people both from people inside and outside of Canada; in hope that by paying the Plaintiff for their immigration applications they will be able to come to Canada either as Temporary Foreign Workers or otherwise. Unfortunately, all these payments went to naught and kept by the Plaintiff for her own purpose and satisfaction. Sadly, until this date from 2019, while the Plaintiff is very much aware of these final court judgments against herself, these innocent people are still waiting for the return of their hard-earned monies.
28The underlined portion leaves no doubt that the defendants pleaded truth as a defence to the claim. In the law of defamation, the defence of truth is called “justification.” Once a plaintiff has established a prima facie case in defamation, the words are presumed to be false. Justification is an affirmative defence, in that the defendants must prove the substantial truth of the “sting” or meaning of the words. Indeed, the defence will fail even if the facts are accurate, but the “sting” of the libel is untrue. Partial truth is also not a defence. See Bent, at paras. 107-08.
29The only evidence supporting Mr. Saludares’ submission regarding the organization of the recruitment agency as an illegal entity was a Small Claims Court judgment. In Batua-An, et a. v. Miranda, et al. the deputy judge held that A & L Hammer had unlawfully collected funds from five out of the eight plaintiff migrant workers and dismissed the claim of three as unsubstantiated. In allowing the five claims, he rejected the joint submission of A & L Hammer and Sharon Mushroom Farms that the recruiter acted for the employer and that they applied the funds collected from the workers to legal fees charged by an immigration lawyer, Ronen Kurzfeld. They were only able to produce invoices for one immigration law file.
30Even if I were to generously construe the defence pleadings in this libel suit as allowing some kind of issue estoppel, I cannot accept the deputy judge’s decision as meeting two elements of the multi-part test for such estoppel, (1) that the parties were the same, and (2) that the decision dealt with the same question: Danyluk v. Ainsworth Technologies Inc., 2001 SCC 44, [2001] 2 SCR 460, at paras. 25 and 59.
31The issue here is not whether the recruitment agency failed to prove in a Small Claims Court action that the funds went toward legal fees. Given that the case started after the CBSA charges and the loss of access to business records, it should not have been surprising that A & L Hammer lost the case and that other plaintiffs obtained default judgments against it. Not being able to prove its side of this narrow semi-regulatory issue is different from Mr. Saludares’ characterization of the plaintiff as a “scammer.” This libel suit is not relitigation of the issue before the Small Claims Court. The claims could have been determined on the basis of breach of contract or unjust enrichment. Ms. Miranda’s civil liability to refund Mr. Saludares’ clients was never in doubt.
32Even the conclusion in the Batua-An judgment that A & L Hammer wrongfully charged for obtaining work permits, a civil claim with none of the sting of a “scam,” was wrong, in light of the factual findings showing the contrary: (underline added):
The court has before it invoices from the Law Office of Ronen Kurzfeld addressed to the Plaintiff Ryan Aporbo in the total amount of $2000.00. Mr. Aborbo told me that he never retained this law office and that the work was done at the behest of the Defendants Lily Mirada and A & L Hammer Work Force.
I am Satisfied from the evidence presented, both the evidence of Mr. Aporbo and the invoices tendered, that the Defendants Lily Miranda and A & L Hammer Work Force Management provided immigration services to the Plaintiffs. These Defendants concede in their Defense that they recruited workers abroad and facilitated the various steps necessary to procure their services as employees of Sharon Mushroom Farm, an entity operated by Ms. Miranda's husband.
I am not satisfied that any of the Plaintiffs retained a solicitor to process their applications. If a solicitor was retained, I am satisfied that this was done by the Defendants Lily Mirada and A & L Hammer Work Force Management without the approval of the Plaintiffs. Mr. Aporbo, the Plaintiff who testified, was adamant that he at no time signed a retainer for the lawyer. I accept his evidence as truthful.
The Defendants concede that Lily Miranda and, A & L Hammer Work Force Management, through which she provides here services are not licensed or entitled to provide immigration services. They maintain, however, that they provided no such services. They maintain that they only acted as recruiters for Sharon Mushroom Farms. I am satisfied on the evidence of the sole witness heard and the invoices noted above that they recruited abroad for workers and facilitated and charged for the various steps required for temporary foreign worker certification. In other words, these Defendants provided immigration services that they are not legally entitled to provide or charge for. If they retained a lawyer, they did so on their own behalf. They are totally responsible for any legal fees paid. I am not satisfied, as submitted by the Defendants, that the invoices simply reflected legal costs passed through to the plaintiffs.
33The essential finding was that the charges were for the employer’s cost of work permits, such as legal fees. The conclusion that these costs could not be passed on to the workers was clearly wrong, because the very practice was the sole permitted act under O.Reg. 348/15:
Exception to prohibition against cost recovery
For the purposes of subsection 8 (2) of the Act, the following are prescribed as costs that an employer may recover or attempt to recover from a foreign national or other prescribed persons:
Costs of air travel and of work permits, if the employer is permitted to deduct such costs under an employment contract made pursuant to the Government of Canada program known as the “Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program”.
34The defendants also introduced three default Small Claims Court judgments holding Ms. Miranda and her agency liable for having collected funds from Canadian relatives of Philippine nationals for immigration services and failing to provide such services.
35Nevertheless, it may have been reasonable for Mr. Saludares’ clients in these cases to believe that Ms. Hammer’s company had defrauded them. They had paid money and did not receive refunds after the work permit applications were lost in the tumult of the CBSA charges. The deputy judges should not be faulted for finding liability. There was no evidence explaining why neither Mr. Saludares’ clients nor the deputy judges were aware of the reasons why the work permit applications were incomplete and why monies were not refunded. One might also construe from the decisions that the deputy judges were not made aware of the above regulation, but there was insufficient evidence on this point.
36The risk of expressing one’s belief or opinion outside the privileged enclave of the courtroom is liability for defamation if one asserts facts that turn out to be false. The liability of the defendants in Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, 1995 CanLII 59 (SCC), [1995] 2 SCR 1130, arose in analogous circumstances. The defendant lawyer in that case made defamatory assertions about a crown attorney, on the courthouse steps.
37Beyond the beliefs they held, the defendants tendered no evidence to justify the characterization of the plaintiff as the perpetrator of a scam, or any similar scheme to defraud the workers they recruited. The unchallenged evidence at trial established that Ms. Miranda, her business, and Mr. Saludares’ Small Claims Court clients, were all victims of events put in motion by the CBSA informants. There was no truth to the accusation that Ms. Miranda operated a scheme to defraud work permit applicants. The defence of justification fails.
3. PRIVILEGE, RESPONSIBLE REPORTING, AND FAIR COMMENT
38In paragraph 8 of the statement of defence, the defendants pleaded that the “Defamations allegedly committed by the Defendants” were “thoroughly and fairly verified by them from several court decisions.” This pleading invoked three different defences, responsible communication, privilege in the reporting of court proceedings, and fair comment.
39Under s. 4 of the Libel and Slander Act, a “fair and accurate” and contemporaneous report in a newspaper of court proceedings is protected by absolute privilege. Absolute privilege is a complete defence to a defamation suit. The purpose of this statutory privilege is to allow the reporting of statements made in court. False statements made in court are protected by common law absolute privilege. The statutory extension to the news media allows the fair reporting of court proceedings without reporters and publishers fearing civil liability for untrue statements.
40Since the Balita articles did not satisfy the contemporaneity element, s. 4 does not apply. I therefore need not consider the fairness and accuracy requirements, except in the course of considering the other two defences.
41In Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, [2009] 3 SCR 640, at paras. 31 and 98, the Supreme Court set out the requirements of the defence of responsible communication and fair comment.
42A defendant relying on responsible communication must first establish that the publication was on a matter of public interest. Second, the defendant must show that publication was responsible, in that he or she was diligent in trying to verify the allegation, having regard to all the relevant circumstances.
43A defendant relying on the defence of fair comment must establish four elements of the comment:
it must be on a matter of public interest
it must be based on fact
although it can include inferences of fact, it must be recognizable as comment and not as an assertion of fact
it must satisfy the following objective test: could any person honestly express that opinion on the proved facts?
even though the comment satisfies the objective test the defence can be defeated if the plaintiff proves that the defendant was actuated by express malice.
44The plaintiff can, however, rebut the fair comment defence with proof of express malice.
45In each defence, there can be no doubt that the story of Ms. Miranda’s recruitment business is a matter of public interest. The plight of migrant workers in Canada should concern not only the affected ethnic communities but the public at large. Beyond this threshold element, both defences fail, for the reasons below.
Responsible Communication
46The defendants did not tender any evidence of the standard of care of a reasonable journalist. Apart from her evidence that she took over Balita from her husband, Ms. Cusipag did not provide any evidence of any training or background in journalism. In the absence of evidence from her or from an expert to defend the defamatory publications, I must turn to the evidence on this point at trial without expert help.
47In Hill, the court held the lawyer’s public statement accusing another member of the bar of contempt of court was defamatory, but the media outlets reporting his comments were not sued. One dissimilarity between this case and Hill was that Ms. Miranda did not sue the original defamer. Nevertheless, because Mr. Saludares was Ms. Cusipag’s sole source, he put himself in an awkward position. Litigation lawyers can become characters in the narrative, because their formal correspondence often set up the battle lines and frame the issues. Subrule 6.01(4) of the Law Society of Ontario’s Paralegal Rules of Conduct permitted Mr. Saludares to make public statements by paralegals, but within the general duty to promote respect for justice. This court also zealously protects parties’ right to their choice of counsel. Counsel’s role in guiding the course of a dispute is different from being the causa causans of the tort: here, as the original slanderer who spoke about Ms. Miranda at the community meeting.
48I gleaned from Ms. Cusipag’s evidence and from her words in the 2020 article that Mr. Saludares was one of the “Elite Crusaders” and that she ascribed faith or credibility in his professional judgment as a paralegal and candidate for the bar. Since Ms. Cusipag admitted that she had never read the Small Claims Court judgments, her defence that she had verified the report of Ms. Miranda as a fraudster “from several court decisions” turned out wholly unfounded.
49In addition to reporting Mr. Saludares’ remarks without any attempt to verify them, Ms. Cusipag considered his words as licence to invent her own story of hundreds of recruits seeking to recover millions of dollars from Ms. Miranda, who took them “for a ride.” The defendants tendered no evidence of the source of this portrayal of Ms. Miranda as the central figure in a global fraud network.
50The defence of responsible communication has no basis in the evidence.
Fair Comment
51The defence of fair comment about the court decisions is a difficult one for the defendants to make, since Ms. Cusipag testified that she did not know about the judgments prior to the publications. On cross-examination, she also admitted she likely saw them for the first time as disclosures in the libel suit.
52To the extent a deputy judge found in one case that A & L Hammer had collected several thousand dollars from work permit applicants and to the extent that several other cases resulted in default judgments, Mr. Saludares’ characterization of Ms. Miranda as the “summa cum laude” of “scammers” was an inflammatory mischaracterization of the judgments. Nowhere in the court decisions did the deputy judges describe millions of dollars being collected from victims all over the world. Ms. Miranda’s liability to repay a handful of claimants seeking recovery of thousands of dollars after her company’s bank accounts were frozen by CBSA agents bore no resemblance to the caricature of Ms. Miranda in Balita.
53The defence of fair comment is also groundless and must fail.
4. LIMITATION DEFENCE
54The defendants relied on ss. 5 and 6 of the Libel and Slander Act:
5 (1) No action for libel in a newspaper or in a broadcast lies unless the plaintiff has, within six weeks after the alleged libel has come to the plaintiff’s knowledge, given to the defendant notice in writing, specifying the matter complained of, which shall be served in the same manner as a statement of claim or by delivering it to a grown-up person at the chief office of the defendant. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 5 (1).
- An action for a libel in a newspaper or in a broadcast shall be commenced within three months after the libel has come to the knowledge of the person defamed, but, where such an action is brought within that period, the action may include a claim for any other libel against the plaintiff by the defendant in the same newspaper or the same broadcasting station within a period of one year before the commencement of the action. R.S.O. 1990, c. L.12, s. 6.
55Ms. Miranda’s counsel conceded that the action was barred in respect of the 2020 publications. As for the December 18, 2022, article, Ms. Miranda’s counsel delivered the libel notice on January 20, 2023, and issued the statement of claim on February 6, 2023.
56Neither of these statutory limitations covered liability arising from Ms. Cusipag’s social media posts, which were not newspapers or broadcasts. Only online versions of newspapers qualify for protections under the Libel and Slander Act: John v. Ballingall, 2017 ONCA 579, at para. 22.
57I therefore find that the limitations defence does not insulate the defendants from liability arising from the 2022 article and Ms. Cusipag’s personal posts. To the extent that the court was provided evidence of the 2020 publications in Balita, they were admitted for background and context only and do not separately attract liability.
5. GENERAL DAMAGES
58The plaintiff acknowledged she suffered no economic loss in connection with the demise of her business. She and her counsel acknowledged that the CBSA charges and the commercial landlord’s actions ruined A & L Hammer.
59It is a basic principle of defamation law that damages are awarded at large: Hill, at para. 164 and 177. The absence of professional or economic loss does not lessen the effect of a defamatory publication. In Hill, the plaintiff not only suffered no harm to his career; he continued to climb the ladder in his profession unimpeded. Rather, defamation attacks personal reputation and identity, both individually and as a member of a community.
60Ms. Miranda was already knocked down by the CBSA prosecution, but she was not knocked out. The law presumes from the withdrawal of the charges that Ms. Miranda did not engage in human trafficking. There was no cogent evidence of the Balita claims that she was a fraudster, let alone the central figure in a fraudulent recruitment network with worldwide tentacles. Balita misused its position as a popular publication in the Filipino community as a bully pulpit to inflict harm to Ms. Miranda’s reputation. Whatever the consequence of the prosecution to her life, she deserves to be compensated for an amount that signifies her status as a person wronged by the defendants’ publication.
61I therefore assess damages in the amount of $150,000. The defendants should not be surprised with the award, and the amount for punitive damages, since it was the amount awarded to the plaintiff in Senator Tobias Enverga Jr. v Balita Newspaper et al., 2016 ONSC 4512, at para. 53, aff’d 2017 ONCA 302.
6. PUNITIVE DAMAGES
62The defendants operate a media company catering to a specific ethnic community in Canada. Despite the claim to be a champion of victims of abusive recruiters, it also sells advertising targeted at the same community.
63In Hill, at para. 196, the Supreme Court described the availability of punitive damages in the defamation context:
- Punitive damages may be awarded in situations where the defendant's misconduct is so malicious, oppressive and high‑handed that it offends the court's sense of decency. Punitive damages bear no relation to what the plaintiff should receive by way of compensation. Their aim is not to compensate the plaintiff, but rather to punish the defendant. It is the means by which the jury or judge expresses its outrage at the egregious conduct of the defendant. They are in the nature of a fine which is meant to act as a deterrent to the defendant and to others from acting in this manner. It is important to emphasize that punitive damages should only be awarded in those circumstances where the combined award of general and aggravated damages would be insufficient to achieve the goal of punishment and deterrence.
64Ms. Miranda’s counsel pointed to the Enverga decision, in which a judgment totalling $250,000 did not deter the same defendants from using its newspaper as a platform for damaging an individual’s reputation. On the evidence before me, it was hard to dispute this submission. The only qualification is that I did not glean from Ms. Cusipag’s evidence that she bore any personal ill will against Ms. Miranda. Rather, she appeared to have returned to the courtroom to face liability for libel, either because $250,000 provided no deterrence or because she believes she must shut down recruitment offices run by persons like Ms. Miranda. Either way, she may believe the truth of the facts but exhibited no concern whether the facts could be substantiated. In that regard, recklessness can establish malice: Hill, at para. 145.
65To deter the defendants from victimizing others based on unfounded claims and allegations, the punitive damage award must be significant enough to broadcast the defendants’ offence to decency and to the value of truth in the information marketplace.
66I therefore award punitive damages of $100,000: the same as the amount granted in Enverga and upheld by the Court of Appeal.
COSTS
67If the parties are unable to agree on the scale and amount of costs, counsel may contact my judicial assistant to request a schedule for the delivery of written submissions and bills of costs.
Akazaki J.
Released: April 23, 2025
COURT FILE NO.: CV-23-00694222-000
DATE: 20250423
ONTARIO
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE
BETWEEN:
LIWAYWAY MIRANDA
Plaintiff
– and –
BALITA MEDIA INC. (BALITA NEWSPAPER) and TERESITA "TESS" CUSIPAG
Defendants
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
Akazaki, J.
Released: April 23, 2025