Liable to get messy

Canada's blogosphere is at war over Warren Kinsella's $600,000 libel suit against Mark Bourrie. It's all over what the latter alleged about the former in connection with Adscam.

While I still believe that bloggers and journalists should be working together to change Canada's libel laws so that freedom of expression is not hampered, I can see merits to both sides of this blogfight.

Here's what Kinsella posted today:

A lot of bloggers were upset at the Ottawa Citizen's Dan Gardner, the other day, when he wrote - disapprovingly - that a lot of bloggers think they can write whatever the heck they want, with impunity.

They can't. They have an obligation to tell the truth, just like they expect the people they write about to tell the truth. That's the great paradox about bloggers, I've found: they love exposing falsehoods and factual errors in the writings of others. But if someone criticizes them for doing likewise - well, get ready for plenty of bleating and braying about free speech.

What are reasonable limits? That depends. For me, when someone viciously attacks friends or family - or when someone falsely and maliciously calls another person a criminal, over and over and over, for instance - I don't let it lie. For others, it might be different. That's them, I guess. For the foreseeable future, I'm me, with my own beliefs.

Over here, Jay Currie tackles the subject:

I write a lot about freedom of speech. Part of that freedom is the right to fight bogus libel suits filed to stifle debate.

And there's a lively debate going on over at Angry's place:

Warren Kinsella is a lawyer, people. That means he can lose his means of feeding his four kids just on the rumour that he was responsible in some way for something illegal.

You mean Kinsella can't survive on his musical stylings alone?

This thing threatens to get out of hand - and neither one of these guys looks like he is going to back down. So I hereby volunteer to act as Judge Judy in this case. What do you boys say?

Comments

[Jiminy C]

A couple of comments Antonia!
Canada's libel laws suck big time!
Having been on the receiving end of a $1 million libel chill exercise, I can attest to them being stacked in favour of the deep of pocket and any "officers of the court" who will accept their instructions!
In the case of Mr. Bourrie - a swift examination of his track record and tendency to publish inflammatory material, including statements that could be taken to court as heavily defamatory - leaves him open to reactions such as those of Mr. Kinsella.
Mr. Bourrie would do well to follow the numerous examples of his one time buddy Michael Bate and issue an abject apology and offer of withdrawal of the offending statements before his family pay for his protracted lunacy and sad penchant for seeking the spotlight!

[Magula Baby]

Warren Kinsella has referred to people "viciously attacking" his "friends and family" so often that it's like listening to the boy who cried wolf.

[Tom O' Bedlam]

Separate rubber rooms for both of them, and throw away the keys.

[Joseph Krengel]

Call me crazy, but repeatedly attacking a man that is complaining about constantly being attacked seems, well, inflammatory. Again, nobody has explained to me how someone PUBLISHING comments that allege Kinsella committed a crime isn't libel (or at least close to it.) I can't comment on Mr. Kinsella personally because I don't know the man, and I do find it troubling that he has a history of threatening legal action.

But at a certain point public exposure starts to wear the nerves thin. Five minutes of looking through Technorati's links and I've already seen people calling him slime, dirt, ethically compromised, shady, two-faced, etc. In that environment, I can understand him being a bit defensive. And I for one would NEVER criticize the family (let alone the deceased family) of another person based on my opinion of that person. Yet I don't see anyone labelling the blogger who mocked Kinsella senior a bully.

[Dr.Dawg]

Now, for some comic relief:

"The statement of claim said Bourrie's post caused Kinsella to face 'hatred, ridicule and contempt.'"

(From today's Ottawa Sun.)

Kinsella faced all those well before Bourrie came on the scene, and deservedly so. He's a bully, to whom someone finally decided to stand up. His defence fund is growing, and lawyers have stepped forward for a little pro bono work, I understand.

Kinsella's about to suffer a tremendous defeat at the hands of the system that he is currently using in classic bully-boy fashion.

If you weren't a friend of his, I'd invite you to the victory party. :)

[Jay Currie]

Antonia, I would think both parties well advised to accept your offer to play Judge Judy. If, as Mr. K would have it, this is an affair of honour then it really does not matter where it is played out. Litigating the construction of a pronoun is truly silly.

[Jay Currie]

Antonia, would you wear a gown? Perhaps a horsehair wig...

Kidding aside, this is a dandy idea for solving what is essentially a rather sad little dispute. Good for you for proposing it. Now let's hope the principals, after a good night's sleep, have the good sense to accept your offer.

It would be a grand thing for the Canadian blogosphere to come up with a home grown dispute resolution mechanism in concert with our MSM friends.

[Mark Bourrie]

I'm game.

[Ted]

There is a lot of discussion here about what constitutes libel/defamation and what are the available defences. For the benefit and interest of all, I've posted a brief primer of Canadian libel law over at Cerberus (http://canadiancerberus.blogspot.com/2006/02/bloggers-and-defamation-law-short.html).

Ted
Cerberus
canadiancerberus.blogspot.com

[Antonia]

Thanks Ted but I had trouble with the link.

Maybe this works better???
http://canadiancerberus.blogspot.com/2006/02/bloggers-and-defamation-law-short.html

[PhantomObserver]

I'm not sure you'd be the right person, Z. I don't think you'd be able to stifle your fits of laughter at both parties.

Mind you, I suspect that WK will settle out of court, once he realizes that he's actually losing the optics game.

[Zorpheous]

Zerby, you're the best. Hopefully you will get both sides to see the light and may cooler heads prevail in this matter (really kind of silly) But don't do it too soon, or you'll spoil my next photoshop project ~evil grin~

[DanToom]

Judge Judy?? Is that old bird still around ?Why not Judge Roy Bean?

[Bill-Muskoka]

Imagine: Judge Mr. Bean instead?

I like Judge Judy. SHe has more brains than most criminal judges actually. My personal preference would be Judge Fraser, played by Michael Murphy.

Now, the sad news. The morons at CBC have cancelled 'This Is Wonderland'. Figures, its the best, most intelligent show they have. Here's my loving email to the morons:

Dear CBC Execs,

"I see you have made some sort of brainless decision to cancel 'This Is Wonderland'.

Congrats, you have just destroyed the best program you have on CBC. Letters will be sent to our MP and others to insure you, likewise, are cancelled!

No, this is not a warm and fuzzy email. It is intended to tell you what morons are running the CBC! Are you one?"

I hope the following find things cancelled for them as well.

You, too, may send warm fuzzies to them at:

http://www.thisiswonderland.com/forum/showthread.php?p=121#post121

richard_stursberg@cbc.ca
Executive Vice President, English Television

susan_morgan@cbc.ca

Creative Head of TV Arts and Entertainment

deborah_bernstein@cbc.ca
Executive Director of A & E programming for English Television

[havril]

I'd also offer my own arbitration services, in case these guys wanted more a Wapner touch. But then I probably can't adjudicate this dispute fairly, seeing as how I, myself, am the target of a disgusting ongoing defamatory campaign ( http://ihateblogofhavril.blogspot.com ).

[Scott Disher aka MoDuv]

I'm afraid Mme. Zerbie comes late to this game re: the warm-front sized, voracious ego of War Kins.

Bourrie and War Kins have been flaming each other in various blog site posts for at least 2-3 years.

In the past, I've received (and saved) insulting e-mails about the other party from both plaintiff and defendant in this latest litigious skirmishing.

I think we all know that WK is a centre-stage addicted moshpit bully;
Bourrie is an odd bird who hates War Kins with an obsessive bent.

N.B. Kinsella slanders all sorts of folks: eg. Michael Bate, Paul Martin, Jim Travers and me.

While Mme Zerbie was resting her wrists over this past weekend I wrote some comments re: War Kins latest antics, which I posted on the Comments Please site (War Kins is too arrogant and lazy to service his own blog comments section--he just lurks and posts incessantly on others):

War Kins becoming their pet jigglingly conflicted media columnist is a sign of the abject desperation of the Graspers.

Now, War Kins, who's trying to rake 'n shovel the gLiberal stable/swamp muck off his resume can start braun nosing his new bosses as much as he was rimming the Harperoids lo these past several months.

I smell the inevitable stench of a hack smackdown book by wk in da woiks.

Mme. Zerbie has (bad) company

...It's also worth noting from a series of recent posts--in which wk strokes paying client McGuinty while trashing CUPE, the NDP, Mike Harris and former wk paying client John Tory--that the wk blog is just one big conflict of interest cess pool in the rat's alley on-ramp to the Can. branch line of the info super highway...which is precisely why the gruesome Graspers have selected War Kins as their, ahem, new media columnist.

BTB, I'm guessin Hop-along War Kins has his own gLiberal seat all picked out for the next reptile run.

Wadda caucus loyalist War Kins will make!!!

[Billy B. ByTown]

I once saw a large and powerful media organization settle out of court because it used a mild synonym for 'criminal' to describe a man in a headline. They were a little tardy with the sincere public apology, so it wound up costing an undisclosed sum of money. And a sincere public apology. When in want of funds, Evelyn Waugh used to go through the penny press 'looking for lawsuits'. He managed to sting the Beaverbrook press for some serious money because they said his brother Alec's novels sold better than his did. I hope Bourrie and his family clearly understand what can happen.