Beware those quick emails - you can be sued!

How many times have we all pressed the send button and then wished we hadn't!

The reasons for wishing you could grab back an email are likely to be personal. For example, you suddenly realize you might have hurt someone's feelings, or that you gave out information that might not have been yours to give out. There is another very practical reason why you should think twice before you press send - the increasing risk of being sued if your email is forwarded to a large number of people.

Two years ago, a dispute arose on Salt Spring Island. A 'bubble' was proposed to go over one or two outdoor tennis courts. A public forum was proposed. Someone strongly opposed to the public forum wrote an email to six friends. In the email, he criticized another individual who was organizing the public forum. He made a number of personal remarks about this individual - for example, he stated that the forum was being organized as a platform for the other individual to express his 'personal rantings', that the individual did not represent anyone but himself, and that he had no credibility but his own 'overactive verbiage'. The email ended with a quote from Shakespeare calling the person an idiot, full of sound and fury. One of the people who received the email forwarded it to all of the members of the Salt Spring Island Tennis Association - which at that time numbered over one hundred.

The individual referred to in the email, sued. The lawsuit was not successful - but only because the judge ruled that although the email had been rude, insulting and unfair, mere insult or abuse is not defamation. Had the judge found that the email damaged the reputation of the individual who sued, the lawsuit would have been successful - even more so, given the large number of people it had been forwarded to. Moral of the story: it's not just what you say in an email but also how many people that email gets sent to.