Posted on 01/29/2014 7:14:41 AM PST by conniew
By Andrew Duffy, OTTAWA CITIZEN January 28, 2014
OTTAWA — The online political forum, Free Dominion, has shut down after a wholesale defeat in a libel case brought by Ottawa human rights lawyer Richard Warman.
A jury concluded that Warman was maliciously defamed by four commentators on Free Dominion, a website that bills itself as “the voice of principled conservatism.”
Warman has been awarded more than $127,000 in general damages, aggravated damages, punitive damages and court costs because of 41 defamatory statements published on the conservative website in 2007.
Warman rose to prominence during the past decade by using the Canadian Human Rights Act to shut down the websites of people spreading hate speech; it made him the target of free speech advocates in the conservative blogosphere, and on websites such as Free Dominion.
In a recently released decision, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith granted Warman a permanent injunction that prohibits Free Dominion from ever repeating “in any manner whatsoever” any of the 41 defamations.
The website’s operators, Connie and Mark Fournier, of Kingston, this week shut down freedominion.ca, saying they could not control what comments other people posted.
“By leaving the forum open and allowing people to comment, we’d be opening ourselves to a contempt-of-court charge,” Connie Fournier said Tuesday.
“If someone repeated one of those comments, we would be in trouble — and could even go to jail.”
The Fourniers have operated the website as a “labour of love” for the past 13 years.
“It’s really sad to be at the point where we have to shut down the political forum,” she said. “But we’ve come to the point where it would be crazy for us to keep it open: it would be too much of a risk.”
They have vowed to appeal the defamation case and have launched a campaign on Indiegogo.com to raise money for their legal costs. The campaign has so far raised $2,800 of its $25,000 goal.
The Warman case is among the first to address at trial what constitutes defamation in the caustic political blogosphere. It adds to case law that suggests the Internet does not shield anonymous posters from legal action if they wrongfully attack someone’s reputation.
On his website, Warman said the case offers lessons for anyone involved in an Internet blog or forum. Chief among them, he said, is the idea that “If you make a mistake, admit it, repair the harm, and move on.”
Connie Fournier, however, said that if the case stands on appeal it will impair the once vibrant Canadian blogosphere.
“I think this is a terrible thing for free speech on the Internet,” she said. “When people who are allowing comments on their blogs and forums look at humongous costs and damage rulings like this, at injunctions that could put them in jail, they’re not going to want to take the risk of opening their site.”
The jury found that the four defendants — Roger Smith, Jason Bertucci, Connie and Mark Fournier — had been “malicious, high-handed and oppressive” in their conduct. Justice Smith also found the defendants had acted unreasonably by refusing to accept Warman’s offer to settle the case for $5,000 each.
Warman had to fight in court to obtain the identifies of those anonymous posters who had left defamatory comments on Free Dominion. The case dragged on for six years, culminating in a three-week trial before a six-person jury.
The Fourniers have never apologized or issued a retraction about the statements found to be defamatory.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
This is a sad day for free speech. I would visit FD to find out what’s happening in Canada cause I didn’t trust the CBC.
Coming soon to a nation near you. :D
I told you a long time ago that there was no freedom in Canada.
In the United Staes, a website operator cannot be sued for statements made by commenters on the site, under section 302 of the Communications Decency Act.
That means putting your real name out there. Do that and there's no telling what you'll have to put up with.
Contributed a small amount to be followed by more as it becomes available.
This is of particular importance to me as I have been planning
to construct a website, in the not too distant future, based in Canada,
in which politics, as well as other subjects, will be discussed.
At present it is in a nascent form at
https://www.facebook.com/NorthernSentinel
why not move it offshore?
Sites like the Ca. one are just the first, sites here are next. We need a plan B.
Agreed...
There you go. Especially hit the Canadian outlets of those sites if they’re any different.
Thank you for your effort. I am very saddened, for your country and for mine.
I just went to his website and posted a message to him, I expect to be sued soon.
As a former Canadian soldier, I risked a lot on three tours, and I will be damned if I let some fake lawyer puke steal our freedom or what’s left of it.
I’m thinking western Canada needs to form a new country called the Free Republic of the West, all conservatives would be welcome.
I’d like to see how the rest of those liberal cockroaches exist on no tax revenue.
Connie, since you and you buddies are threatened by Canadian courts, why don’t you just move to the USA, and keep on running your website from Panama? You could then tell the jerk judge, and that ass plaintiff, to go sit on a Coke bottle and ROTATE! If you are afraid you would not be let in through Buffalo, say, just fly to Mexico and sneak across our southern border like so many illegals. Then you would get Obama’s Amnesty!
“I’ll bet this guy is a real douche bag.”
Might be libelous.
Hopefully they’ll come over here... and join us at FreeRepublic...
No, time for conservatives to step forward and say 'hell no' to such inane court rulings and refuse to comply with them. To go right on doing whatever the court ordered them not to do, and flipping the bird. To strip the court of the power to override common sense.
Alas, what happens is we suggest doing the same to liberal sites and pretend that a massive quashing of free speech didn't actually just happen.
With this decision, the court effectively closed down all public forums in Canada. And that should be an awfully scary thing to Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc. There should be a line a mile long of lawyers from those sites filing the appeal on behalf of the Fourniers. There should be shareholders SCREAMING for that assistance to be given, as they should realize that every single penny of assets of those multi-billion dollar companies just got laid out on the floor of that courtroom.
“now I really believe Canada SUX”
possible defamation.
The Honourable Robert Smith is an honourary fascist.
If it weren't you posting the above and it were someone else, I'd tell them to go spread their B.S. walking.
Instead I'm left to shake my head and think Canada is lost. Not that we're much better off here in the U.S. mind you ....
So sorry for what you've one through .... beyond that I'm just speechless.
You have a very good point. Wonder how far the conservative site owners could go without the Nanny-State throwing them in the gulag? (for re-education of course)
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