Free Dominion was a Canadian conservative internet forum. The site used the phrase "Principled Conservativism" to describe its ideology.
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The lead moderators and former owners of the site were Mark and Connie Fournier. Mark Fournier ran in the 2007 Ontario election for the Freedom Party of Ontario in Kingston and the Islands placing last with 137 votes (0.28%). [1]
On December 31, 2005, Free Dominion made news when one of its frequent contributors, Gordon Stamp, resigned as Peter Goldring's campaign manager as a result of comments Stamp had posted on Free Dominion about being open to Alberta separatism under certain circumstances. [2] Goldring was subsequently quoted saying that Free Dominion is "extreme" in its views. [2] [3]
In early 2008, the website was sold to Liberty News Service in Panama, with the Fourniers retaining operational control of the website.
In July 2007, a complaint was made against Free Dominion before the Canadian Human Rights Commission for posting material perceived to be discriminatory against Muslims. [4] [5] The complaint was subsequently withdrawn.
Free Dominion and Connie and Mark Fournier have been defendants in a total of four lawsuits for defamation.
Among the suits against Free Dominion and the Fourniers were four filed by Richard Warman, a human rights lawyer. Three of the suits were for defamation and an additional unsuccessful suit was for copyright infringement. Of the three defamation suits, two have proceeded towards trial while a third, filed with Warren Kinsella as co-plaintiff, has been inactive.
In 2008, Warman sued the Fourniers and eight John Does for libel. As part of this case, Warman asked the court to order the Fourniers to release information which could assist in the identification of the eight John Does: their email addresses and IP addresses. Justice Kershman ordered them to do so. However on appeal, the Superior Court overturned this decision unless Warman could prove a prima facie case against the John Does before their information was released. [6]
On August 9, 2013, the case finally began with jury selection. After 10 days of testimony, the jury was charged. On October 2, 2013, the jury found that Warman was maliciously defamed by 41 statements made on the website and awarded him $42,000 in damages, plus costs which were later set at $85,000. Superior Court Justice Robert Smith banned the site from republishing "in any form whatsoever," any of the 41 defamatory statements. Smith wrote in his decision that: "The continued publication of libellous material would cause irreparable harm to the plaintiff’s reputation and prohibited material has already been found to constitute libel." Smith wrote that as the jury found the defendants made the comments about Warman "maliciously" and refused to apologize, "I find that the plaintiff has met his onus of showing that an injunction should issue to prevent the defendants from publishing in any manner whatsoever any statements found to be defamatory of Mr. Warman in this action as set out in jury Exhibit J". [7] [8] As a result of the permanent injunction the Fourniers decided to close the Free Dominion forum to the public. On December 11, 2015, a panel of 3 justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the lower court's ruling and awarded Warman an additional $23,000 in costs. [7] [9] The site has been offline since the day the appeal decision was issued.
In April 2008, Warman filed an additional libel suit against the Fourniers and Free Dominion as well as the National Post columnist Jonathan Kay as well as the newspaper itself, and bloggers Ezra Levant, Kathy Shaidle and Kate McMillan of the Small Dead Animals blog for repeating allegations that Warman was the author of a 2003 internet post regarding Canadian Senator Anne Cools that used racist and sexist epithets. Warman denied that he was the author of the post. The National Post and Kay apologized, retracted the statement and settled out of court with Warman. [10]
In June 2015, Shaidle, Levant and McMillan all settled with Warman in exchange for paying him undisclosed amounts and the issuing public retractions and apologies in which they admitted there was no evidence that the allegations against Warmn were true, leaving the Fourniers as the sole remaining defendants. [11] The trial is pending.
Ottawa writer and former union official John Baglow, who blogs as "Dr. Dawg", filed suit against the Fourniers and Free Dominion participant Roger Smith over a post in which Smith referred to Baglow as "one of the Taliban’s more vocal supporters." In a March 2015 ruling, Madam Justice Heidi Polowin found the words to be defamatory and also rejected claims by the Fourniers that they were not publishers and not legally responsible for words posted by others on the Free Dominion forum stating that "To adopt the position of the defendants would leave potential plaintiffs with little ability to correct reputational damage," however she dismissed the suit ruling that in context of "rough and tumble" debate in the blogosphere the words, while defamatory, could be accepted as "fair comment". [12] The judge awarded no costs to either side as "both sides were successful and unsuccessful". [13]
Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation – like dignity and honour. In the English-speaking world, the law of defamation traditionally distinguishes between libel and slander. It is treated as a civil wrong, as a criminal offence, or both.
Strategic lawsuits against public participation, or strategic litigation against public participation, are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.
Hill v Church of Scientology of Toronto February 20, 1995- July 20, 1995. 2 S.C.R. 1130 was a libel case against the Church of Scientology, in which the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted Ontario's libel law in relation to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restrict the ability of public officials to sue for defamation. The decision held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, then not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—they must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice", meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is frequently ranked as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court establishing the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals. The Court held that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, states are free to establish their own standards of liability for defamatory statements made about private individuals. However, the Court also ruled that if the state standard is lower than actual malice, the standard applying to public figures, then only actual damages may be awarded.
Ezra Isaac Levant is a Canadian media personality, political activist, writer, broadcaster, and former lawyer. Levant is the founder and former publisher of the conservative magazine, The Western Standard. He is also the co-founder, owner, and CEO of the far-right media website Rebel News. Levant has also worked as a columnist for Sun Media, and he hosted a daily program on the Sun News Network from the channel's inception in 2011 until its demise in 2015.
Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal.4th 33 (2006), was a California Supreme Court case concerning online defamation. The case resolved a defamation claim brought by Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell against Ilena Rosenthal and several others. Barrett and others alleged that the defendants had republished libelous information about them on the internet. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Godfrey v Demon Internet Service [2001] QB 201 was a landmark court case in the United Kingdom concerning online defamation and the liability of Internet service providers.
The Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE) is one of a number of groups run by neo-Nazi and white supremacist Paul Fromm. Established in 1981, CAFE states that it is committed to the promotion and defense of total freedom of speech, and publishes the Free Speech Monitor ten times a year. Although it began in Ontario, it has also been incorporated in Alberta.
A person who is found to have published a defamatory statement may evoke a defence of innocent dissemination, which absolves them of liability provided that they had no knowledge of the defamatory nature of the statement, and that their failure to detect the defamatory content was not due to negligence. The defence, sometimes also known as "mechanical distributor", is of concern to Internet Service Providers because of their potential liability for defamatory material posted by their subscribers.
Kathy Shaidle was a Canadian author, columnist, poet and blogger. A self-described "anarcho-peacenik" in the early years of her writing career, she moved to a conservative, Roman Catholic position following the September 11 attacks, and entered the public eye as the author of the popular Relapsed Catholic blog. Citing some points of friction with Catholicism, Shaidle launched her own blog in 2007 called FiveFeetofFury. Her views on Islam, political correctness, freedom of speech, and other issues ignited controversy.
Richard Warman is an Ottawa-based lawyer who is active in human rights law. Warman worked for the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) from July 2002 until March 2004. He is best known as the primary instigator of actions related to Internet content under Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act against people including white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Modern libel and slander laws in many countries are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel prosecutions. Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbade libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be obviously facetious. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.
Canadian defamation law refers to defamation law as it stands in both common law and civil law jurisdictions in Canada. As with most Commonwealth jurisdictions, Canada follows English law on defamation issues.
Grant v Torstar Corp, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, 2009 SCC 61, is a 2009 Supreme Court of Canada decision on the defences to the tort of defamation. The Supreme Court ruled that the law of defamation should give way to the rights of a party to speak on matters of public interest, provided the party exercises a certain level of responsibility in verifying the potentially defamatory facts. This decision recognizes a defence of responsible communication on matters of public interest.
J Robert Verdun is an activist shareholder-rights Canadian advocate, an author and a former editor of a weekly paper. He was also a defendant in an important defamation lawsuit.
Astley v Verdun, 2011 ONSC 3651, is a leading defamation decision released by Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The case was publicized for the amount of damages awarded to the plaintiff, and the permanent injunction ordered against the defendant.
Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.
Crosby v Kelly is an important Federal Court of Australia case concerning the jurisdiction of the court to hear defamation claims. The judgment of the Full Court confirmed that the Court has original jurisdiction to hear defamation claims that could be heard by a Territory court, specifically the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory. The consequence of this is that almost any defamatory comment made on the Internet and in the national press could be brought before the Federal Court.
