Law Times

Law Times • august 10, 2015 Page 5 www.lawtimesnews.com Former senate staffer seeks stay of damage award to richard Warman By JenniFer Brown Law Times he Ontario Superior Court has ordered a former senior Con- servative Senate staffer who re- posted a defamatory statement about Ottawa human rights lawyer Rich- ard Warman to pay $10,000 in damages. In a decision issued by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on July 30, Jus- tice David Corbett ordered Michael Veck to pay Warman the money after finding he had no legal defence for posting an ar- ticle about the lawyer that was "obviously defamatory." However, on July 31, a bankruptcy trustee for Veck wrote to Warman's law- yer and the court indicating a stay of all legal actions. "I've asked the trustee to immediately withdraw the notice of stay of proceed- ings and am reviewing the information provided to determine my next steps," said Warman last week. Warman added he intends to pursue the $10,000 libel judgment and costs "to the fullest extent possible." The case arises in the context of a de- bate over the relationship between laws against hate speech and the principles of freedom of speech. Warman is an advo- cate against far-right and neo-Nazi hate speech. In March 2009, Veck republished an article first published by the National Post and written by former columnist Jonathan Kay about the lawyer that was untrue. Warman says the article appeared on a Stanford University web site forum catering to leaders in politics, academia, the military, and journalism. The National Post retracted the origi- nal article after Warman issued a libel notice. Both Kay and the newspaper sub- sequently settled a libel action against them. Veck republished the article more than a year after the newspaper had re- moved it from its web site. In his decision, Corbett wrote: "I find the impugned article posted by Mr. Veck is defamatory of Mr. Warman. I find that Mr. Veck has no legal defence for pub- lishing this defamatory article. . . ." Corbett went on to say a message Veck posted as a retraction and an apology on the same web site "did not cure the dam- age caused by the defamatory article and should not serve to reduce damages awarded to Mr. Warman." Veck's apology posted to the web site was as follows: "I previously published material here that attacked the person- al and professional reputations of Mr. Richard Warman. Mr. Richard Warman states that these allegations were false, and so I wish to retract them and apolo- gize." Corbett said: "Mr. Veck is not assisted in these defences by the fact that a sub- stantial portion of his article was a rep- etition of Mr. Kay's article in the National Post. "A defendant cannot escape liability by publishing statements originally pub- lished by someone else. Put prosaically by Lord Denning fifty years ago: 'Our English law does not love tale-bearers. If the report or rumour was true, let him justify it. If it was not true, he ought not to have repeated it or aided in its circula- tion. "He must answer for it just as if he had started it himself.'" In an e-mail exchange last week, Veck confirmed he no longer works in Cana- dian politics but declined to comment further on the matter. LT NEWS law.utoronto.ca/ExecutiveLLM GPLLM Global Professional Master of Laws [Get a Master of Laws] Because business issues are legal issues. So if you want to get ahead in business, get the degree that gets you there faster. ONE YEAR – PART - TIME – NO THESIS – FOR L AWYERS AND NON - LAWYERS Untitled-8 1 2015-03-02 11:15 AM T Check out lawtimesnews.com for insight from our regular online columnists Darcy Merkur brings a plaintiff-side perspective on insurance matters in Personal Injury Law

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