I Don’t Buy It
– and I hope the judge doesn’t either.
Another libel suit has been launched by Richard Warman & Warren Kinsella against the Free Dominion for accusing “people like Richard Warman & Warren Kinsella” of “Nazi-like behaviour” and thereby seriously prejudicing their reputations and impugning their integrity.
If I was a judge I’d toss it out as soon as I could get the lawyers for the parties together in one room.
I’ve been accused of being nazi-like, I have been accused of being an anti-Semitic Jew hater, I was even once accused of committing blood libel, and I have been called a terrorist supporter more times than I have fingers and toes - and suing the petty individuals who were left with throwing meaningless insults over something I had written because that’s all they had would have lent them far more credibility than they had or deserved.
There are, no doubt, people out there who could harm the reputations of Richard Warman & Warren Kinsella with that type of statement.
There are also, no doubt, people out there who could impugn their integrity.
– but neither Mark Fournier, Constance Wilkins-Fournier, and their website, are those people, and I would hope that a reasonable court would recognize that fact.
[h/t The Daily Bayonet via Canadian BlogWatch]
I’ve read real libel cases where this stuff is taken seriously. In the face of such claptrap, the judges are more concerned of the reputation of the plaintiffs, than by the lack of influence or respectability of the author.
Besides, judges wouldn’t even start to make the ruling that the authors are not worth the time unless the defendants themselves argued it. That would be an interesting Statement of Defense:
27. The Defendants plead that they are stupid and without authority and are incapable of libeling anyone before an audience with an average IQ of 65 or higher.
Legalities aside, in my wishful world of the revised defamation tort, that whole posting would likely classify as an insult and as political speech (however pathetic) and would not be tortable.
Where is the libel?
I seriously don’t see any libel. There are true statements of fact - Warren is out checking washrooms for graffiti and making a very big deal out of what he finds, while Warman has, um, “interesting” investigatory methods. Then there are characterizations of these actions. That would be an opinion and is based on the acts of the plaintiffs.
Libel would be to falsely claim that the defendants had done something unsavoury. To falsely claim that Warren is out hunting bathrooms for graffiti would indeed be libel, as you would be impunging his character based on things that are not true. Unfortunately, Warren proudly attested to his actions.
If libel is to include unpleasant characterizations of true facts, then Warren should be especially concerned. His little Barney the Dinosaur antics would have landed him in financial purgatory. Actually, they still should based on his reading of the various Human Rights Codes, as he was transparently intending expose a “person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination” - namely that the target was an evangelical Christian.
Why you shouldn’t buy is bullshit from blogs like the daily bayonet. If you read Kinsella’s paperwork you will see that the post in question ALSO accused both him and Warman of planting evidence of hate crimes, and it is hard to interpret the passage in question as meaning anything but that. You think this isn’t defamatory?
When will the insanity end?
Missed by me the first time, is the “planting hateful screeds on the Internet” phrase which, given recent events, could be taken to mean or include the Cools post, which more and more appears to not have been Warman. I’m certainly convinced that it wasn’t. I consider the false attribution of a racist post quite inflammatory, and should be actionable. So’ I’m reversing what I said above, and think that the suit has merit.
The rest just seems silly and obviously pejorative, but a judge would likely see libel there.
Warman and Kinsella are described as “Nazi-like”. Judges go after that one. The Nazis advocated violence against a oppressed, identifiable group. Ouch.
Another inflammatory sentence is the last one, which has Kinsella doing knee-height photography in bathroom stalls without explaining why.
Even when there are facts out there supporting a statement, if they are not immediately clear to a reasonable person, the statement will be interpreted by a judge on it’s own merits. I frankly had no idea what that last sentence was about, and thought it had Kinsella taking pictures of people while they were using the washroom.
And, of course, there’s the malice angle, which kills off a fair comment defense.
The overall innuendo seems quite defamatory as well.
Still, if not for the reference to the Cools post, I’d call this an infantile political rant.
More info on “Nazi-like” behaviour from Mr. Warman - he wants certain books to be incinerated and anyone carrying them across the border to be jailed http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20080409_48864_48864&page=1
Cools aside, Warman has actually engaged in racist sock-puppetry. He denies the specific comment, but otherwise is proud of his antics, as Warren is of his. There is no libel here.
Warren is not the most cool headed person in the world, and is rather quick to start thowing accusations around. He should be thankful that other people are not quite as quick to the writs as he is, such as his less than level headed assertions about the intentions of people throwing a school fundraiser at a nearby (though not close enough for his tastes) golf course. One wonders why Warren’s sensibilities aren’t outraged by the location of his office in Yorkvile - I guess the vanguard of the proletariat can only be asked to endure so much, and he is slumming it by living in the beaches, which has some homes under $1M and is a long commute from Yorkville, when he could quite rightly be living around Yonge St.
“Another inflammatory sentence is the last one, which has Kinsella doing knee-height photography in bathroom stalls without explaining why.”
This is a reference to a swastika WK photographed in a washroom stall at a kids hockey game (if I remember the details correctly). FreeD is accusing him of faking the drawing the swastika himself.
Er - one might argue that the Fourniers’ near Phelpsian credibility precludes their ability to prejudice anyone else’s reputation or impugn their credibility, but having read the post in question, that first line seems to clearly accuse both RW and WK of planting hate speech on the web. The last line, while not a clear accusation of forgery of the bathroom pics, could be seen as such without massaging the semantics much at all.
It was a monumentally stupid posting on those two points alone. The middle bit is just filler and I don’t know any reasonable person who would call it libel. Unfortunately, I know a whole lot of unreasonable people who conflate offensive speech with hate speech, and none of whom can tease out the difference between either of those and libel, which is what’s at issue here. Some of my acquaintance will casually libel someone while simultaneously demanding that the same person be jailed under hate speech laws for being a big old meanie.
I do think there is a libel case to be argued here, however, neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants elicit much sympathy from me.
There’s no accusation of planting hate speech - Warman has admitted to making bigoted, hateful comments on the web as part of his “investigations”. So no libel.
Warren was photographing graffiti in a washroom - though whether it was knee height hasn’t been proven. Perhaps Warren’s height is being libeled, or graffiti is only important if it’s at least 3 feet above the floor but he’s being maligned for worrying about graffiti about 2 feet above the floor.
As to “camera never lies” - implication isn’t libel and there are so many ways to read it, especially concerning whether or not someone running around the bathrooms of the nation scratching swastikas is actually a Nazi.
There is no basis for complaint, but there should be punishingly large fines against Warman and Warren for vexatious filing.
The post in question made no distinction between RW and WK when it mentioned planting hateful screeds, and unless you can come up with evidence that RW and WK admitted to planting hate speech or engaging in racist sock-puppetry, then there is an accusation that needs to be answered. As for the implication that WK faked the photos, a reasonable person might infer that from the posting. Emphasis on “might”. I think it’s a weak case, but the first statement really requires a defense.
So, rather than dismissing the complaint out of hand based on the source, why don’t some of the Fourniers’ defenders do the kind of yeoman work done by Buckets on tracking down the IP address that started this whole mess, hmm? I’ll gladly admit that there is no case when I see persuasive evidence that both WK and RW posted even one hateful little turd.
Well there’s no evidence that Warman is out taking bathroom photographs either. It takes an exceptionally obtuse and malicious misreading of the quotes to attribute Warman’s actions to Warren and Warren’s actions to Warman. Also, it takes someone who is unfamiliar with English grammar, rhetoric, logic, and argument - though perhaps that is a given for anyone on the left, you’d know better and who I am to argue that point?
Again - I am asking for evidence, not rhethoric or insults. You know what evidence is, don’t you? A post, a link, an admission - something that substantiates the claim - made clearly in the first line of the post - that either of the plaintiffs engaged in the kind of hateful screeds they have been accused of posting.
So far, nothing.
As for obtuse, I am trying to evaluate the claim as a judge might, based on how a reasonable person might evaluate that post. Blogging virgins will not look at that post the way you or I might do. They may or may not know sweet bugger all about the ongoing RW saga, or even have heard of WK before. On it’s face, it looks like the Fourniers’ accuse RW and WK equally of the same behaviour. That’s the claim they made, and that’s the claim the Fourniers’ now have to defend.
Am I to understand that Kinsella and Warman are mutually insulted by being sloppily co-accused of each other’s efforts to fight hate in Canada, and so have elected to file jointly to clear Kinsella’s name of Warman’s reputation and vice versa? Or is it not factual that Warman ever planted a screed and that Kinsella ever took the alleged photographs?
I am bemused that after being explicitly referred to as “Nazi hunters” the plaintiffs have elected to imagine themselves accused of being “Nazis”. Not very many reasonable and intelligent people would conflate the two. The phrase “Nazi-like” covers a lot of behaviours from wearing brown shirts to trying to enforce one’s social beliefs on others, but doesn’t imply loyalty to the swastika.
[...] second item is a new lawsuit against Free Dominion jointly filed by Richard Warman and Warren Kinsella. Frankly I don’t [...]
Valiantmauz is correct. The post will be judged on its merits, not based upon what someone could know had they read or consulted all kinds of other sources. In libel, judges are concerned with “ordinary meaning.” This makes a lot of sense.
The opening paragraph says:
“From planting hateful screeds on the internet, to photographing bathrooms stalls at knee-height, there is no place where stawart Nazi hunters like Richard Warman and Warren Kinsella fear to tread.”
Further down in the piece, the bathroom photography gets attributed to Kinsella, but the “planting hateful screeds” is clearly attributed to both. Whatever the author intended is irrelevant. The standard used is objective, not subjective. It is the author’s job to be concise, not the reader’s job to be a mind reader.
Furthermore, the bathroom photography bit could still get attributed to Warman as he is never specifically excluded. In libel law, ambiguities tend to the plaintiff. And, as I said above, in its ordinary meaning, the innuendo seems to be that Kinsella is doing something improper in a bathroom with a camera.
Oh, I can quote the libelous material above, by the way, without being sued. Fair Comment defense clearly applies here.
If you set this post in context, with the comments that followed, I think the libelous interpretation becomes pretty much the only one possible.
That’s Bigcitylib, reading Free Dominion so the rest of us don’t have to.
IrC:
Am I to understand that Kinsella and Warman are mutually insulted by being sloppily co-accused of each other’s efforts to fight hate in Canada,
They were co-accused, sloppily or just plain stupidly. It’s up to the accuser to correct the error. Since the accusers apparently elected to stand by their sloppiness or stupidity, I’m underwhelmed by this objection.
and so have elected to file jointly to clear Kinsella’s name of Warman’s reputation and vice versa?
That’s a supposition based on what, exactly? Is there a pubic statement or evidence to back up this interpretation? From the currently available information, I don’t see that either WK or RW need to clear their names. Under the existing libel laws, it appears that the accusers have to prove either or both allegations.
Or is it not factual that Warman ever planted a screed
That hasn’t been proven and the initial allegations regarding the Cools posting have been seriously undermined by the investigation done by Buckets on the Rogers proxy arrangements at the time of that posting, at least to my mind. If there are other allegations or admissions, I have not seen them.
and that Kinsella ever took the alleged photographs?
That WK took the photos is not disputed. What is at issue is the implication that he may have forged them. I’ve already stated that I think this is a very weak charge, and that if there is anything to the libel action, it’s in the very first line of the post, accusing both RW and WK of planting hateful screeds on the Internet.
All I want is the slightest smidgen of evidence that that charge is true. If there isn’t any, then I fear the Fourniers are in for a rough ride.
I’m not worried about objections; I’m just amused by the image evoked. “If it pleases the court, my client Mr X is defamed by the incorrect attribution of the conduct of his esteemed peer and co-plaintiff, Mr Y”. And then the same, but with roles reversed.
I was not considering the “Cools” posting which I have not read; I was aware only of the earlier sock puppetry mentioned by Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn.
What exactly is the implication that any photos were forged or staged? “The camera never lies” is a colloquialism which reminds us that pictures are nearly devoid of context. It is not an accusation of forgery.