Thanks for the ping/(post) back to this very important thread. Long time no see, backhoe (one of the great posters of all time). I hope you are doing well. It is VERY GOOD to see you.
About four years ago one of Warman’s associates decided to get into the lawfare game too. This guy is a far left blogger in Canada.
When this case began there was a big controversy in progress about a Canadian Taliban terrorist. The leftist blogger supported the case of the terrorist. One day a member of Free Dominion got in an argument, on the leftist’s blog, about the issue. They argued for a while there and then continued the debate onto another blog. Eventually the Free Dominioner brought the fight to Free Dominion.
An important thing to understand here is that this debate happened between two people using only their internet screen names.
In his long post that brought the fight to Free Dominion, our member referred to the leftist blogger as “one of Canada’s most vocal supporters of the Taliban.” The blogger then got on the thread at FD using a second screen name, and pretending to be a woman, and outed himself on the thread. He later used this planted evidence connecting his screen name to his real name as evidence against us in a defamation suit he launched against Connie and me (and against the author of the words). The plaintiff lied repeatedly at first that he was the person behind the female screen name but eventually had to give up and admit it. He also bragged that he was considering not even naming the author of the words in his suit because it was really the Fourniers (us) who he “wanted to get”.
The upshot is that because one person using an internet alias insulted another person’s internet alias on our website, we have been fighting this lawsuit for four years now.
About two years ago we filed a motion of dismissal in Ontario Superior Court outlining the above facts and the judge there completely dismissed the case against us in a ruling that was lauded across the country. The plaintiff wouldn’t let it rest though, he filed an appeal. The appeal wasn’t that the judge had made the wrong ruling but that the ruling shouldn’t have been made in a motion for dismissal, the plaintiff should have had a full blown trial. The Ontario Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, but with an unusual twist. They said that they did not understand enough about the new issues surrounding this case so they ordered a full trial so both sides could bring in expert witnesses and interveners to inform the court before such an important ruling was made. They then ordered us to pay the plaintiff $14,000 because we lost the appeal.
We have our ducks in a row for that case and it will be heard in March, 2014.