MONTREAL — A new class-action lawsuit against MindGeek is awaiting certification in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, adding to the legal challenges mounting against the Montreal-founded pornography giant.

The lawsuit’s named plaintiff, Christine Wing, and the proposed class are seeking $600 million in damages from MindGeek for allegedly hosting intimate sexual videos of them without their consent. According to the lawsuit, three separate sexual videos of Wing, an Ontario resident, were uploaded to a MindGeek-owned website by her ex-husband around May 2020.

The lawsuit claims MindGeek failed to implement proper screening measures to filter out illegal content, resulting in psychological and emotional harm to people whose videos were uploaded without their knowledge.

“As a result of the exposure of their intimate moments, Christine’s and the class’ ability to carry a normal life has been extinguished because of ongoing pain and suffering caused by the actions and inactions of the defendants,” the suit reads. 

The class action was filed on Nov. 1. Attorneys for Wing, Toronto-based Diamond & Diamond, declined to comment on the case, and MindGeek didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Founded in Montreal but headquartered in Luxembourg, MindGeek already faces lawsuits in other jurisdictions such as Alabama and Quebec amid allegations that the company, which owns many of the most popular adult websites, didn’t adequately screen content for child sexual abuse and other illegal content. 

In December 2020, an Ontario woman alleged in a proposed class action in Quebec that Pornhub, one of MindGeek’s websites, hosted a video depicting her sexual abuse at age 12. Like the Ontario complaint, that lawsuit seeks $600 million in damages from MindGeek.

This newest Ontario lawsuit seeks compensation for any person in Canada who appeared in sexual content disseminated by MindGeek without their consent, or whose videos or images continued to appear on the company’s platforms after requesting their removal. None of the allegations have been proven in court. 

The Quebec and Ontario cases are likely to proceed separately, given that Canada does not have a system for consolidating class actions filed in different jurisdictions, said Molly Reynolds, counsel at Torys, who specializes in privacy law and civil litigation.

The certification process involves extensive preparation of evidence and other materials and typically takes at least a year, though it is often longer, Reynolds said. Still, Canadian courts have taken a more permissive approach to class actions in recent years, allowing a greater portion to proceed to the certification stage, she said.

“Right now, in Ontario, it’s probably easier to get a privacy class action certified than it is in Quebec,” Reynolds said.

Some class actions against MindGeek have already been resolved. In October, the company settled a class action filed in a federal court in California, in which 50 women, including four Canadians, said they were tricked into participating in a sex-trafficking scheme. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Scrutiny of MindGeek first ramped up in December 2020, when The New York Times published an article claiming that the company has profited from videos of child rapes and revenge pornography, among other illegal content. In response to the article, Pornhub deleted millions of videos from its platform, which previously allowed anyone to upload videos, limiting new uploads to users who had verified their age.

MindGeek’s payment providers, including Visa and Mastercard, also cut ties with the company, resulting in a huge drop in revenue and profit for the company, The Logic previously reported. Since peaking last November, MindGeek’s revenue and EBITDA have fallen by 40 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively.

The latest lawsuit will contribute to MindGeek’s legal woes as Canadian investors circle the company, seeing an opportunity to rehabilitate a troubled asset. Earlier this year, an investment firm led by cannabis entrepreneur and former Liberal Party CFO Chuck Rifici put together an offer to buy the company for US$525 million, but the deal never materialized.