Nov 10
22
Judge orders Ezra Levant to pay $25,000 to CHRC lawyer Giacomo Vigna
National Post – November 20, 2010
Judge orders Ezra Levant to pay $25,000: Charged with defaming human rights lawyer
By Joseph Brean
A judge has ordered free speech activist Ezra Levant to pay $25,000 to Giacomo Vigna, a Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer, for libelling him with “reckless indifference” to the truth in blog posts about a major hate speech case. By accusing Mr. Vigna – who once represented the CHRC in the prosecution of Freedomsite.org webmaster Marc Lemire – of lying to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, switching critical evidence, failing to honour a promise to the Tribunal chair, and being fired, Mr. Levant “spoke in reckless disregard of the truth and for an ulterior purpose of denormalizing the Human Rights Commission across Canada which makes his statements malicious in that sense.” Mr. Justice Robert Smith also ordered Mr. Levant to remove the libellous materials from his website within 15 days. They remained there Friday night, and Mr. Levant said he is getting advice from his lawyers about an appeal.
Many of Mr. Levant’s statements about Mr. Vigna were judged not to be libellous, in that they amounted to fair comment. These included Mr. Levant’s assertions that Mr. Vigna is a “buffoon” who “be-clowned himself” in front of the Tribunal, that he is a “three time election loser” and the CHRC is a “dumping ground for extremist politicians,” or that Mr. Vigna was a “bully” who sent “goons” to “harass” Mr. Levant’s parents, when in fact it was a process server trying to serve the libel notice. Mr. Levant’s comparison of Mr. Vigna to Joe Pesci’s lawyer character in the film My Cousin Vinny, while “not flattering,” according to the judge, was similarly cleared.
In all, the judge found Mr. Levant defamed Mr. Vigna on six occasions between March and May 2008. The blog posts were about a controversial episode in the hate speech case against Mr. Lemire, brought by anti-hate lawyer Richard Warman. Mr. Vigna once led the case on behalf of the CHRC.