Fake chicken: Subway can sue CBC for defamation

The Supreme Court refused to hear the petition of the CBC, which wanted Subway’s defamation lawsuit to be overturned due to a report that his chicken was not really just a chicken.

Last January, the Ontario Court of Appeals overturned a decision by the province’s Supreme Court that ordered Subway to pay $680,000 in legal fees to attempt to file a $210 million defamation lawsuit, blocking the possibility of a defamation lawsuit moving forward.

By upholding the appeals court’s decision, Subway will finally be able to move forward with the defamation charges.

“Allowing this action to proceed toward a evidentiary decision gives appropriate weight to the public interest over the harm caused by defamatory statements and the public interest over protecting the type of expression for which CBC files are delivered,” the Ontario Court of Appeal said. gravity.

CBC decided to appeal this decision to the country’s highest court, basing its argument on freedom of expression and the importance of properly informing the public of what matters to them.

“It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court chose not to hear our appeal, but we remain confident in our journalism and our ability to successfully defend our story,” CBC spokesman Kerry Kelly said Thursday, responding to the decision.

In 2017, the television program CBC Marketplace aired a report in which journalists reported that the chicken sold in Subway was actually about half of the original chicken meat, and the other half from soy.

The report was based on the laboratory work of researchers at Trent University in Ontario, who analyzed the content of DNA tests.

For its part, Subway felt that the results obtained by Trent University and then broadcast by CBC were incorrect, and that publishing this information could harm the restaurant business.