Casses v Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2013 BCCA 200

The court adopted the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Pizza Pizza and held that pleaded meanings arising from the same context, broadly approached, are not excluded as being “separate and distinct” meanings.

As to mitigation pleadings, the Court also applied a liberal approach, permitting pleading specific instances of wrongdoing as “relevant context” relevant to damages.

The court applied the English Burstein approach as opposed to the traditional rule against pleading specific incidents of wrongdoing in mitigation.