Our client indirectly referred to a conflict with another person on a personal Instagram account. The other person, believing the post made them identifiable and amounted to defamation by both false and true statements of fact, filed a criminal complaint against our client for defamation.

Our strategy in this case centered on proving the absence of both 'identifiability' and 'intent to defame.' We emphasized that our client had not directly named the other party in the post and that it was nothing more than a general expression of feeling. We further argued that, in context, the post was in the nature of a private venting of emotion rather than a matter of public interest, and therefore did not satisfy the elements of defamation. Through consistent statements during the police investigation, we established the absence of criminal intent and secured a non-referral decision.