DEFAMATION BY OMISSION AND ORDER

Published: July 6, 2026 | Updated: July 24, 2026 | By: Roger Baker 7 min read

A news report can defame by what it leaves out and by the order in which it tells the story. In Authentic Southside Taekwon-Do Club (Tien Lung Taekwon Do Club Edmonton South) v Taylor, 2026 ABKB 470 ("Authentic"), the Court of King's Bench of Alberta held that a television consumer segment defamed two related Edmonton martial arts clubs. The broadcast conveyed three distinct meanings, and the Court found one of them untrue. On that meaning, the presentation of the story was inaccurate, important information was left out, and the message conveyed to viewers was false. Roger Baker of Baker Law Firm acted for the plaintiffs at trial.

The decision works through what the words meant, which defences held, and what a damaged corporate reputation is worth. The segment aired on February 19, 2015. The trial was heard over September 8 to 17, 2025, and the Court released its reasons on June 25, 2026.

A Consumer Story and a $10,000 Bill

The dispute began as a contract problem. In 2013, a parent enrolled two of her children in four-year memberships at the plaintiffs' taekwondo schools; when she later moved to cancel, a required transfer form went unsigned, monthly payments stopped, and arrears accumulated (Authentic at para 10). The actual cancellation fees, under the cancellation terms she signed, were $1,616 and $1,832, and they were never paid (Authentic at paras 6 and 10). By December 2014 the accounts were in default, and the full contractual balance of $10,850 across the two four-year contracts was accelerated and demanded (Authentic at paras 10 and 46).

Comments the father posted online caught CTV's attention (Authentic at para 8). On February 19, 2015, CTV Edmonton aired a "Consumer Watch" segment about the dispute, hosted by reporter Kim Taylor. CTV posted the story to its website under the heading "Hard lesson cancellation fees" and linked it from its national Facebook page (Authentic at paras 11–12). It stayed on CTV websites until at least December 2023 (Authentic at para 152).

The Three Meanings the Broadcast Conveyed

Defamation turns on meaning. A plaintiff must prove that the words referred to it, that they were published, and that they were defamatory, in the sense that they would tend to lower the plaintiffs' reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person (Authentic at para 13). Publication was not disputed, and the Court found the broadcast and the Facebook post identified the plaintiffs (Authentic at paras 14–16). Meaning is assessed in context, from the publication as a whole (Authentic at para 26). Read that way, the segment conveyed three meanings, or "stings," to a reasonable viewer (Authentic at para 27):

• "Tien Lung charged excessive or unreasonable amounts to customers seeking to cancel their contracts."
• "Tien Lung does not honour their own representations: they make misrepresentations and are untrustworthy."
• "Tien Lung aggressively pursues customers who do not pay for their children's extracurricular activity, while insisting on very high rates of interest."

Which of the Three Meanings Carried Liability?

The sting that carried liability was the accusation that the plaintiffs made misrepresentations and were untrustworthy. The Court described that allegation as very serious (Authentic at para 80). The broadcast conveyed it through a presentation the Court found inaccurate:

"The problem is that the order in which the information is presented is inaccurate and important information is not included. The result is that the meaning a reasonable person takes from the words, the sting, is untrue." (Authentic at para 42)

On that sting, every defence failed. Justification was not made out (Authentic at para 48), and the inference was not fair comment (Authentic at para 59). Responsible communication failed as well (Authentic at para 87).

The Court declined to find liability on the other two meanings. It held that the defence of justification answered the collection-practices sting (Authentic at paras 35–39), and that calling the $10,000 figure excessive was comment protected by fair comment (Authentic at paras 54–58). On the facts, though, the Court found there was no $10,000 cancellation fee. As it explained, "it was not a cancellation fee: it was an acceleration of the entire contractual balance due to default in payment" (Authentic at para 52). The plaintiffs have appealed the liability findings on these two statements (see The Appeal section below).

The Court's Findings on Verification

Before the segment aired, Kim Taylor had the records that told the full story. As part of her investigation she received a bundle of emails between the parties from the fall of 2014, and the Court found those emails "clearly set out the sequence of events and Tien Lung's expectations" (Authentic at para 81). The publication did not reflect that record. It "omits many of these details, misstates the order in which the events occurred, and leads to the defamatory inference" (Authentic at para 82). The facts "could and should have been stated in the News Broadcast in a manner which provided the necessary background to the story without leading to the defamatory inference," and they were "therefore not accurately reported" (Authentic at para 83).

Nothing about the story required that framing. The Court found no particular urgency to the matter (Authentic at para 84), and no need to raise the defamatory inference to accomplish the segment's stated purpose of warning consumers to read what they sign, with no justification for doing so (Authentic at paras 85–86). The evidence also showed "no independent verification or review of the information by other CTV personnel" (Authentic at para 66).

Those findings decided the defence. The defendants "failed to show diligence in verification of the allegation" (Authentic at para 87). The same record did not establish malice, though. The Court found no reckless disregard for the truth, and no dominant purpose of injuring the plaintiffs (Authentic at paras 72 and 75–76).

The Damages Claim and the Expert Evidence

The plaintiffs claimed $7,500,000 in general and special damages and $2,500,000 in punitive damages (Authentic at para 137). The economic loss case rested on expert opinion evidence. Robert Doran was qualified as a financial expert, entitled to give opinion evidence on business losses, and he provided both a report and testimony at trial (Authentic at para 143). For the period from the broadcast to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he calculated the clubs' loss in the range of $2,449,435 to $3,069,995 (Authentic at para 161).

Causation became the battleground. The Court pointed to negative online reviews and a widely shared Reddit post that predated the segment (Authentic at paras 164–165), to the downturn in the Alberta economy that emerged in 2015 (Authentic at paras 174 and 181), to the pandemic (Authentic at paras 157–160), and to the fact that only one of the three stings was defamatory (Authentic at paras 169 and 183). Weighing those factors, the Court was not persuaded that a specific economic loss caused by the defamatory sting had been proven, and it awarded no special damages (Authentic at para 183). Damages are presumed once defamation is established. As the Court put it, "The quantum of damages is not presumed: it must be proven" (Authentic at para 135).

What the Court Awarded

General damages for a corporation compensate its reputation and goodwill. The evidence showed an immediate and hostile public reaction to the broadcast, reaching the plaintiffs from Alberta and well beyond (Authentic at paras 154 and 168), and the Court found the defamatory sting contributed to the harm to the plaintiffs' reputation and goodwill (Authentic at paras 182 and 191). The stature of the publisher mattered to that assessment. "CTV is certainly a highly respected national news broadcaster," and the reach of the broadcast and the Facebook post was very broad, with reactions arriving from local, national, and international locations (Authentic at para 201).

The Court assessed general damages at $250,000 and granted judgment in that amount plus pre-judgment interest under the Judgment Interest Act (Authentic at paras 203 and 208). It dismissed the punitive damages claim because malice had not been proven (Authentic at para 206), and it weighed the other contributors to the reputational harm and CTV's post-broadcast conduct in arriving at the figure (Authentic at paras 199–202). Past results do not guarantee future results, and outcomes vary by case.

Why This Decision Matters

For anyone who publishes, accuracy is measured against the meaning conveyed, not the script. A story that leaves out necessary background or presents events out of sequence can be false and defamatory no matter how its individual lines read in isolation (Authentic at paras 42 and 83). For a business on the receiving end of coverage, liability can rest on a misleading presentation, and proving what the harm cost remains demanding even with qualified expert evidence behind the claim.

The Appeal

On June 30, 2026, the plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal with the Court of Appeal of Alberta (file 2603-0161AC). The appeal challenges the trial decision on liability for the "$10,000 cancellation fee" and "aggressive collections" statements, and raises issues with the treatment of general damages for reputational harm, provable economic losses, and punitive damages. The respondents to the appeal are Kim Taylor and CTV. Baker Law Firm acts for the plaintiffs in Authentic, at trial and now on the appeal. Our litigation practice regularly handles defamation claims for businesses and individuals, both pursuing and defending them.