A BC Supreme Court judge in Prince George has reserved decision about an application by the company behind Snapchat to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the parents of a 12-year-old boy who died of suicide after using the app in 2023.
“I’ll provide written reasons in due course,” Justice Ronald Tindale said on Wednesday, July 29, after hearing arguments for a day and a half.
Nicola Smith and Ryan Cleland sued Snap Inc. last October for negligence, failure to warn and negligent or fraudulent misrepresentation.
Their son, Carson, took his own life on Oct. 12, 2023 after a sextortionist contacted him on the social media app.
Their lawyer, Claire Hunter, said that, in the course of exchanges with the defendants since October, the plaintiffs have been “completely open with Snap about the information that they have.”
“What is clear on the record, Snap has not done the same,” Hunter said.
Hunter emphasized Snap’s lack of response to the notice of civil claim. Instead, it filed the application to strike the lawsuit entirely. The California company’s Toronto law firm, Torys LLP, argued it should be thrown out due to alleged gaps and flaws.
In court on Wednesday, July 28, defence lawyer Linda Plumpton introduced an affidavit from a Snap legal department employee that said Carson registered in 2018 when he was seven-years-old and claimed to be 36.
Hunter called that a “very selective and, I will say, misleading affidavit.” The only accounts examined were the ones held by Carson and his parents.
“There’s no review of the bad actor that’s referred to as ‘Kendra Boo,’ and apparently no review of any other actors who communicated with Carson by Snapchat,” Hunter said.
Kendra Boo was the handle used by someone that claimed to be a 17-year-old girl in New Jersey, but was actually a male in Nigeria. That person coerced Carson to send nude photos of himself and then threatened to distribute the photos if Carson did not send money or gift cards.
Hunter said heavily redacted documents released by the RCMP about the investigation showed the suspect communicated with Carson via Snapchat and Google Gmail. The suspect was traced to Nigeria and used the MTN Nigeria network in the Ojota region. Information was provided to Nigerian police, via a liaison officer.
“They made attempts to locate, but were unable,” the RCMP synopsis said.
While there are references to other forms of communication, the initial connection occurred on Snapchat, when the user was placed in Carson’s friends list.
“The platform permitted the connection to be made with a sexual predator in Nigeria of a person who, it is pled, Snapchat knew or ought to have known was a minor,” Hunter said.
Parents of minor age Snapchat users, including the plaintiffs, relied on Snapchat representations to believe it was safe for their children to hold accounts and determine the degree of supervision. Snapchat, Hunter said, has the capacity to detect adult users who are contacting minor age users for the purpose of sexual exploitation, but failed to do so.
“This pleading gets it right or right enough for this stage of a proceeding, and it provides enough particularity for the defendant to plead in response — and they should be required to do so,” Hunter concluded.
In her reply, Plumpton said at the heart of the defence application is a question to the judge about whether the plaintiffs failed to plead facts necessary to establish duty of care.
“We say that the answer remains that they have not,” Plumpton said.
By Bob Mackin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Jul 29, 2026 at 17:43
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