It may be that in a bygone era, a legal claim to privacy could be seen as an unnecessary concession to those who were reclusive or overly sensitive to publicity, though I doubt that that was ever an accurate reflection of reality. Today, personal data has assumed a critical role in people’s lives, and a failure to recognize at least some limited tort of breach of privacy may be seen by some to be anachronistic.

For that reason, this Court may well wish to reconsider (to the extent that its existing jurisprudence has already ruled upon) the issue of whether a common law tort of breach of privacy exists in British Columbia.

The interesting question of whether the law needs to be rethought will have to await a different appeal.

Class actions result when a company’s, for example, actions or inactions impact a large class of individuals, rather than one individual plaintiff.

Two well-known cases, turned-Hollywood movies, of class actions include those represented in “Erin Brockovich”, starring Julia Roberts and “A Civil Action”, starring John Travolta.

Throughout Canada, like the US, class action litigation has increased in the recent years. Many of these actions arise due to “data breaches” (aka privacy and security breaches) on mass scales. This includes breaches of Yahoo, LifeLabs, and Simon Fraser University, among many others.