DRAMA AND MELODRAMA IN NOVA SCOTIA COURTROOM
REVISED... JAN 30, 2012: Trout Point Lodge owners Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret appeared in Justice Suzanne Hood's Yarmouth Supreme Court Monday to appeal to the Justice to award them and the limited company owning the lodge $1,150,000 in general, punitive and aggravated damages, plus publishing injunctions against Mississippi political blogger Doug Handshoe, who did not attend the hearing.
Trout Point Lodge, et al recently won a default judgement against Handshoe, who did not present a defense, saying that the issues should and would be decided by a U.S. court. In the wide-ranging damages hearing portion of a defamation lawsuit brought against Handshoe in 2010, Leary questioned Perret under oath and vice-versa and Leary presented the opening and closing arguments.
In the more than 2-hour hearing, the pair iterated a litany of defamatory 'stings" which they allege were inflicted upon them, casting doubts about the viability of their business, insinuations of the business being connected to the Mafia, salacious comments and graphics about their sexual orientation and what they say were untrue assertions about their connection to a growing, major New Orleans political fraud scandal. Leary testified that recent online assertions that they were both being investigated by the FBI and that readers of the Slabbed blog should conact the FBI had them frightened.
In what appeared to be emotionally-charged testimony, the pair testified that they thought that the recent revelations on the Slabbed blog about New Orleans lawyer Roy D'Aquila and his relationship to recently indicted New Orleans politician Aaron Broussard and Trout Point Lodge might have resulted in or contributed to his death yesterday, possibly from a heart attack or embulism.
When the pair complained to the Justice that Slabbed had access to public court documents from Nova Scotia from one of Trout Point Lodge's two other defamation lawsuits and was publishing them on theb internet, Hood reminded them that the documents are public records and available for all to see.
Perret also asked that the Justice clear the courtroom for some of his testimony, which she refused to do. Perret refused to testify to that portion of his previous affidavit with spectators in the room.
Throughout the hearing, Justice Hood repeatedly warned Perret not to lead Leary, not to put words in his mouth, not to give Leary answers and not to introduce hearsay about RCMP investigations or internet downloads. She twice had to stop Perret from introducing unproven assertions about blog postings on a variety of web sites that the pair presumed, but could not prove, were penned by Handshoe.
Leary and Perret testified repeatedly about the contempt which they felt Handshoe had displayed for the Nova Scotia Judiciary and Hood reminded him that the judiciary was not a party to the case.
The pair also intimated to the court that South Coast Today was somehow complicit in the case and made mention more than once of a previous employee who they said was fired and was feeding information to Handshoe. A legal expert contacted by SCT said that both of those assertions, if proven to be untrue, could be the basis for an independent defamation case against Leary and Perret. "Defaming someone in a courtroom during another proceeding offers no protection," said the lawyer.
In the damage amounts portion of the hearing, Leary and Perret ultimately asked for $250,000 in general damages. They seemed to stumble in their presentation about whether they were claiming $300,000 in aggravated damages for all of the plaintiffs combined or that amount for each of the plaintiffs. When prodded by Hood about which option they were preferring, Leary and Perret conferred for some time and replied that they preferred $300,000 for each plaintiff.
The pair told Justice Hood that they had not appealed for damages based on lost business, as they "would be hard pressed to quantify" those losses. Hood said she agreed, especially since the state of tourism in the region was so dire and that there were other factors in play.
Leary and Perret also asked for a permanant injunction, and when again prodded by Justice Hood, also asked for a mandatory injunction, which would allow Trout Point Lodge Ltd to prevail upon internet service providers to remove all of Handshoe's blogs from their servers. In support of this claim, Leary and Perret introduced a recent Ontario Appeals Court decision (Jones v. Tsige, 2012 ONCA 32) in which the concept of "intrusion upon seclusion" was introduced in a major decision in Canadian courts.
Towards the end of the hearing, Justice Hood told Leary that she thought his pleadings in the case were some of the best legal work she had seen in her courtroom in some time. She said she will present her oral opinion on the damages award in the same courtroom at 11am on January 31.
