Ashley Madison’s legal dispute with a Toronto woman gets even more complicated

Ashley Madison’s legal dispute with a Toronto woman gets even more complicated

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What could possibly go wrong at the offices of a website that exists entirely to enable extramarital affairs? Well, this, at least: Doriana Silva, the ex-Ashley Madison employee who brought a lawsuit against the site late last year, is now being countersued by its Toronto-based parent company, Avid Life Media.

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Silva, whom the Canadian Press describes as a Brazilian immigrant living in Toronto, claims that she developed a wrist injury while being made to write 1,000 fake, Portuguese-language profiles for Ashley Madison. She says her work was part of an attempt by Avid Life Media to lure men to a new Brazilian version of Ashley Madison by making it seem as though the site was already teeming with suspiciously attractive married women. She’s reportedly seeking $20 million in compensation for the company’s “unjust enrichment” at her expense.

Now, according to the Canadian Press, Avid is seeking $100,000 plus legal costs from Silva. The company claims she illegally kept copies of confidential documents, including “work product and training materials.”

Avid hasn’t admitted to seeding Ashley Madison with fake profiles, but Silva has strongly suggested that the documents in question contain evidence of the practice. Her statement of defence says: “It was reasonable for Doriana to take steps to preserve the aforementioned documents and others given that Ashley Madison has denied both publicly and in these proceedings that such materials exist at all.”