Aug 30, 2011: The lawsuit for defamation assault and mental and emotional distress filed in August by Trout Point Lodge luxury resort owners Vaughn Perret and Charles Leary against a Mississippi blog and its owner is wending its way through the courts, with a response by Slabbed Blog owner Doug Handshoe due by early November.
Perret and Leary have successfully pursued defamation claims against the New Orleans Times Picayune, resulting in retractions by the paper of some controversial stories about the pair and alleged connections to a growing scandal surrounding public officials in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. A defamation claim by them about a blog related to SCT recently resulted in a retraction.
Some of the officials named in court documents and media stories own properties adjacent to Trout Point Lodge and/or have stayed at the lodge over the years. According to prior media reports Perret and Leary lived in or near Jefferson Parish and operated businesses there, prior to moving to Nova Scotia in the late 1990’s.
In their 89-point “statement of claim” filed on August 9, Perret and Leary make several assertions about defamatory actions by Handshoe. Some of the claims against Handshoe in the suit include that he made homophobic references to Leary and Perret, referred to disgraced politician Aaron Broussard’s Nova Scotia properties as being connected to the Jefferson Parish corruption scandal and that the property was a front for a criminal enterprise, mocked Leary & Perret, implied that investors in Trout Point might be illegitimate or suspicious, printed innuendo that Trout Point Lodge might be involved in New Orleans waste disposal contracts, suggested that Broussard’s Nova Scotia properties connected to payroll fraud, fraud and conspiracy, implicated Leary & Perret in being the recipients of millions of dollars in payments to Jefferson Parish waste disposal contractors and suggested that Aaron Broussard’s sudden resignation was somehow connected to a WVUE TV broadcast connecting him to Troupt Point Lodge and Perret and Leary.
None of the claims in the suit have been proven in court. Very few defamation suits proceed to trial, but those which do often take three to seven years to complete.
When contacted by SCT, handshoe would not address the specifics of the claims by Perret and Leary, but did say, “Slabbed New Media takes this Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) filed against us by Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret very seriously. As an American Citizen I have free speech rights under the first amendment to the constitution and am shielded from defamation judgments from foreign jurisdictions without similar protections by speech.” Handshoe says that his firm is consulting with their US-based legal team and formulating their legal strategy, which he would not directly comment upon. “At this point all our legal options are on the table,” he added, “including filing counter claims against Charles Leary, Vaughn Perret, Danny Abel, and Trout Point Lodge here in the US and/or Canada.”
Handshoe told SCT that a revised claim had also been filed. Leary and Perret did not respond to requests for comments on this story.
