The PA case also held that section 12 of the Torts Ordinance is an exception in the landscape of tort law, at the center of which is the personal liability of the wrongdoer. Therefore, the imposition of liability in accordance with section 12 of the Torts Ordinance must be done in a controlled and limited manner, all the more so in relation to the ratification alternative, which is an exception to an exception, and the difficulty in applying it is further sharpened where punitive damages are involved. This alternative should be used narrowly and in very rare cases.
- In our case, the relevant alternatives claimed in accordance with section 12 of the Torts Ordinance are the alternatives of the licensor and the ratifier (see section 42 of the plaintiffs' summaries). In other words, the argument is that when Google and Meta refused to remove the publications from the establishments they own, in accordance with the plaintiffs' request, they approved and ratified their advertising, and therefore a cause of action is formed against them in accordance with theProhibition of Defamation Law.
The plaintiffs also claimed the existence of the other alternatives detailed in section 12 of the Torts Ordinance. However, in the matter of Civil Appeal 3024/10 Weiner v. Moyal [Nevo] (2013), in paragraph 27 of the judgment of the Honorable Justice E. Hayut it was held that:
"The various alternatives of action enumerated in section 12 (the collaborator himself, the assistor, the counselor, the seducer, the testator, the authorizer and the approver) differ from one another in the degree of the contribution and the degree of their participation in the act of wrongdoing committed by the principal wrongdoer, and they also differ from one another as far as the point in time at which they occur. Thus, for example, it is clear that the person who solicited or seduced the main perpetrator to commit the tortious act did so before it was carried out and is therefore involved in the commission of the tortious act itself. The same applies to those who shared an act or omission at the stage when they are "about to be done" or those who assisted, advised, commanded or authorized their conduct at that stage. On the other hand, the language of the section raises an additional category of those who shared themselves in the wrongful act or omission after it was committed, as well as those who approved it retroactively (the original version of the Ordinance uses the term ratification in this context)" (my emphases - R.A.).