Venable helped secure a win for plaintiffs in a Canadian defamation suit. The underlying action involves an action by 53 plaintiffs for defamation in the case of Clancy et al. v. Farid. Tanvir Farid (a.k.a. Tanvir Islam, defendant) was liable for online defamation involving the 53 plaintiffs. Venable advised a number of the plaintiffs, who were executives and employees of Oracle.
The case started out as an anonymous defamation case in 2013. Lee Brenner helped locate the defamer in Canada and, along with co-counsel in Canada, had him tracked by a private investigator. He then helped secure an order whereby, before the defendant learned of the lawsuit, authorized personnel went to the defendant's apartment and immediately confiscated his computers and iPhone. Those devices were then examined and showed that the defendant was, in fact, the anonymous defamer.
Law Times quoted Brenner saying, "solving the question of who was spreading the false statements came down to what he calls good old-fashioned putting together of puzzle pieces and seeing that the common denominator was that these were primarily recruiters he was targeting."
The National Post quoted, "This was not about money, this was about restoring people's reputations," Brenner said.
In this historic win, the defendant, Farid, was ordered to pay the sum of CA$4,773,00.00 (plus prejudgment interest). This is by far the highest damages award ever made in Canada in a defamation case against a single defendant (the second highest was for $2.5 million).