A judge in St. John’s, Newfoundland has ruled in favour of bereaved family members in a class-action lawsuit against a memorial website that posted information about their departed loved ones without permission.

The founders of Afterlife have been ordered to pay a total of $20 million after the website was found to be in violation of copyright and guilty of obituary piracy.

The website posted unauthorized obituaries of thousands of people from across North America and solicited money from mourners through the sale of a number of offerings including virtual candles and flowers.

Sandra Wilson discovered her daughter Tayler’s obituary had been posted to Afterlife after the 25-year-old died from a seizure in December 2017.

“To see your own child’s information on there, I was absolutely appalled,” recounted Wilson. “It was like taking my grief and wrapping it around another thorny bush that I had to figure out how to navigate through again.”

“I’m super proud of the people who went after them and never gave up.”

Wilson says she joined the class-action against Afterlife not for the money but as a matter of principle.

“This was definitely about making a statement.  Saying this is just profoundly wrong, this needed to stop, it needed to be put out there to the masses. I’m glad the attention was put out there.”

Lawyer Erin Best, who represented the members of the class-action, was pleased by the ruling but knows the collection of the payment from the company will be an undertaking. “I don’t anticipate we will be able to collect the full amount,” admitted Best. “Our research in advance of bringing the class-action revealed that Afterlife didn’t have that kind of money but we decided to pursue it anyway.

As part of the ruling, the founders of Afterlife were prohibited from operating the website. According to the judge, a website similar to Afterlife has emerged and its believed the same people are behind it.

In an email to CTV, Pascal Leclerc, operator of Afterlife, said he was unaware that a ruling had been made against him until he learned of it on the news on Thursday.  Leclerc added that the amount of funds he collected from the website was less than the cost of operating the website and he never intended to make a profit.

With files from CTV’s Chris Epp