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Subway must pay CBC $678K after defamation suit against broadcaster dismissed

March 3, 2020

In Canada, a judge has ordered Subway to pay $678,000 in legal and other fees and disbursements to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after the brand's anti-defamation suit against the CBC over a 2017 "Marketplace" story on chicken quantities in Subway's sandwiches was dismissed last November, according to a report in Toronto's CityNews. Subway had originally requested $210 million in damages from the CBC, but only the sandwich brand's suit against Trent University, in Oshawa in the Canadian province of Ontario, was allowed. That school did the lab work for that story, and late last year, the judge for the case ordered the school to pay Subway $220,000 in costs. 

Still, the ordered payment to the CBC is more than double that amount. In his decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice Ed Morgan said Subway's approach to the litigation ended up adding to the complexity and length of the litigation, which the judge dismissed pretrial last November under legislation aimed at protecting free speech on matters of public interest, according to the CBC. 

Morgan said in his decision that the CBC was required to make a "herculean lawyering effort" to deal with the allegations in the litigation, Morgan said, which he said extended and complicated what was intended as a more expedient procedure. That meant the CBC incurred some $800,000 in legal costs, which Morgan rounded down to $500,00 for legal costs, but added that Subway will also be ordered to pay the CBC another $178,000 in fees and disbursements.