It means exactly what it says -- someone, male or female, who distinguished themselves in the preceding seven days with an absolutely jaw-dropping display of unfettered dumbcuntitude. And, Lordy Lordy Lordy, what a bucket of candidates we had this week.
First, there was interim CPC leader Rona Ambrose, being shocked -- SHOCKED!! -- by the historical lack of human rights in Saudi Arabia. To confess that you're unfamiliar with Saudi Arabia's violence against its own citizens requires a thigh-sucking cluelessness that is off the charts. But, no, it's not Rona.
Then there was CPC MP Candice Bergen, apparently utterly unfamiliar with the concept of irony, whining about the Liberal Government sidelining scientists in the pipeline review process. The idea of someone from the Paleolithic era of the Stephen Harper government whining about someone else giving scientists the cold shoulder is enough to make one's head explode. But, no, it's not Bergen, either.
Right up until an hour ago, it was going to be one Paul Bronfman, who thinks that his money gives him the right to decide who gets free speech and who doesn't. Bronfman's attitude towards higher education seem to be, "Nice campus you got there ... be a shame if I fucked you over for doing something I don't like." Extortion, thy name is Paul Bronfman, for whom I was just about to start engraving the first award.
Then along came Ezra.
Oh, dear God. Ezra.
Because here's Ezra, whining about how a couple of his pathologically dishonest and creepy hacks got their asses kicked out of a press conference. This is Ezra, whose media outlet relentlessly describes Rachel Notley's NDP government with appallingly eliminationist rhetoric such as "kill", "destroy" and "attack"; for whom everything he disagrees with is a vicious "assault"; for whom everyone else are "hired thugs" and "mercenaries"; for whom the only way to describe Rachel Notley is that she "hates" Alberta. And Ezra wonders why sane people don't want to be in the same room as the obsessively venom-spewing perpetual liar Sheila Gunn Reid and dippy airhead Holly Nicholas?
It's actually anti-climactic to hand this inaugural award to Ezra; it was all set to go to Bronfman but, at the last minute, Ezra simply blew by everyone. Any other outcome would have been dishonest.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Patrick Ross, and the end of a very long road.
While I prefer to not blog at length about the years-long legal battle between myself and one Patrick Ross, I will make this one, final exception because, after this post, there will be nothing left to discuss as the case will be over and we can all move on, and you can all stop e-mailing me and asking what's happening. Fair?
I won't bother to recap the sordid details -- you can read the beginning of it here, and I have blogged about it extensively at this very blog, much of it in aid of once trying to locate Patrick Ross when Patrick Ross was desperately trying to not be found. No, what this post will cover is the closing chapter, after which it's all over and there's nothing left to write.
The beginning of the end dates back to December of 2012, when defendant Ross -- in a brazen and transparent attempt to escape legal proceedings that were descending on him like a million-pound shithammer -- filed for personal bankruptcy in Saskatchewan. In this, Patrick was eminently successful -- bankruptcy put an immediate halt to all attempts at collection and legal proceedings, whereupon my lawyer informed me there was, really, nothing we could do as long as Patrick was protected by bankruptcy. On the other hand, once Patrick's mandatory nine months of bankruptcy was up and he applied for his discharge, well ... that was another matter.
Now, the nine months one spends in bankruptcy comes with its own set of obligations on the bankrupt (regular reporting to one's trustee, attending financial counselling sessions), and it should come as no surprise whatever that Patrick Ross was hopelessly deficient in his obligations, to the point where his own trustee was prepared to file to remove himself from the case out of sheer frustration, and leave Patrick twisting in the wind.
And it should come as no surprise that Patrick took so long to fulfill his legal obligations as a bankrupt that it was not until April of 2014 that we finally got Patrick into a courtroom for his discharge hearing, where my lawyer quietly, calmly and professionally, tore him six new kinds of asshole. I will not get into detail, as you can draw your own conclusion of the bankruptcy registrar based on her ruling posted here. In particular, I draw your attention to the judge's unambiguous smackdown:
wherein the judge leaves no doubt about Ross' culpability -- the word "reprehensible" figures prominently, as you can see. And it's here where the story drags to its painful, Bataan death march of a conclusion.
Predictably, Patrick Ross filed an appeal -- an appeal which, when shown to various legal people who actually understood law, left each and every one of them gasping with laughter, tears streaming down their faces.
It will suffice to point out that Patrick's primary appeal argument is that, since he chose not to even defend against the original defamation claim in Ontario back in 2010, it would be unfair for the Saskatchewan Court of Bankruptcy to hold him accountable for the fallout of that default judgment since, well, after all, those claims had never been tested in court. In short, Patrick Ross chose not to defend against the original claim, and he was now using that lack of defence as his defence.
The mind reels. But ... onward.
Now, despite the utter worthlessness of Patrick Ross' initial filing of an appeal, it did suffice to get his case into the pipeline for appeals, one of whose consequences was to put an immediate stay on Ross' legal obligation to start paying the court-ordered $200/month to his trustee for the next 14 years -- a consequence I suspect Ross was counting on and, sure enough, those payments were put on hold until the appeal could be heard and resolved. And it's here where the real entertainment begins.
Because, you see, this is when the court explained to Patrick Ross that his initial filing of an appeal was hopelessly deficient, and he needed to come back with an appeal in proper form, which required things like a Notice of Application and other interesting documents, before a court date could be set. And it was at that point that Patrick Ross probably began to realize that maybe he was in a bit over his head. As my lawyer wrote to me (and I quote, verbatim):
Which brings us to the very last chapter in this sorry, sorry saga. At this point, Patrick Ross' initial filing of an appeal, while ridiculously deficient, was still enough to put the payment plan on hold, and until Patrick gets back to the Registrar with either all of the proper legal documents (or, conversely, withdraws his appeal), everyone is now waiting for him to jump one way or the other. And I suspect this is precisely what Patrick had in mind -- file just enough to gum up the works, then walk away, having stalled the entire payment plan. And I'm sure Patrick Ross is feeling amazingly smug about how he's beaten the system once again.
Not surprisingly, my lawyer pointed out that you can't just delay this sort of thing forever, and that, after a certain amount of time, if Patrick hasn't submitted the proper paperwork, she could file to have Patrick's appeal treated as "abandoned." And it's here where I'm going to do Patrick Ross the humongous favour of telling him precisely what I plan on doing to rectify this situation.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And here's why.
As it is, Patrick Ross is currently a 33-year-old (UPDATE: now 34-year-old) undischarged bankrupt university dropout, living at home with his parents and looking at 14 years of being an undischarged bankrupt, followed by six (maybe seven, I can never remember which) more years of being a discharged bankrupt. Quite simply, for someone who considers himself the smartest and baddest motherfucker on the Intertoobz, Patrick Ross is looking at dealing with the consequences of his malicious defamation of me, civil judgment and subsequent personal bankruptcy until he is well into his fifties. But that's not the sad part of this.
The truly sad part of this is that I have been assured by my lawyer that, while Patrick Ross is undoubtedly crowing about how clever he is at having his appeal postpone his legal obligation to start making payments, it has also prevented the 14-year payment clock from even starting to tick. In other words, while Patrick dawdles on what to do regarding his appeal, all he is accomplishing is pushing the consequences of his bankruptcy, day by day, further into his old age.
It is precisely for that reason that I instructed my Saskatchewan lawyer that under no circumstances is she to expend any time or effort to track down Patrick Ross or push to have his appeal brought before the court. No, I have instructed her to take his file and put it in a back drawer somewhere, and leave it there. Because, to be frank, I can survive quite nicely without that $200/month, and if Patrick Ross wants to languish as an undischarged bankrupt for the rest of his life, I have no problem with that and he has my blessing.
So here endeth the story. I'm getting on with my life (which involves travelling the world, eating well and drinking really good gin), my lawyer is stuffing the Patrick Ross file into a box, and Patrick is free to spend the rest of his days living in his parents' basement, tweeting about pro wrestling and which upcoming Marvel Comics Avenger movie he looks forward to the most, stocking shelves at the Lloydminster lumber store he works at, and getting used to living without a credit card or a credit record of any kind, never being able to get a bank loan or a mortgage. And if he's happy to be there, I'm happy to leave him there.
The end.
I won't bother to recap the sordid details -- you can read the beginning of it here, and I have blogged about it extensively at this very blog, much of it in aid of once trying to locate Patrick Ross when Patrick Ross was desperately trying to not be found. No, what this post will cover is the closing chapter, after which it's all over and there's nothing left to write.
The beginning of the end dates back to December of 2012, when defendant Ross -- in a brazen and transparent attempt to escape legal proceedings that were descending on him like a million-pound shithammer -- filed for personal bankruptcy in Saskatchewan. In this, Patrick was eminently successful -- bankruptcy put an immediate halt to all attempts at collection and legal proceedings, whereupon my lawyer informed me there was, really, nothing we could do as long as Patrick was protected by bankruptcy. On the other hand, once Patrick's mandatory nine months of bankruptcy was up and he applied for his discharge, well ... that was another matter.
Now, the nine months one spends in bankruptcy comes with its own set of obligations on the bankrupt (regular reporting to one's trustee, attending financial counselling sessions), and it should come as no surprise whatever that Patrick Ross was hopelessly deficient in his obligations, to the point where his own trustee was prepared to file to remove himself from the case out of sheer frustration, and leave Patrick twisting in the wind.
And it should come as no surprise that Patrick took so long to fulfill his legal obligations as a bankrupt that it was not until April of 2014 that we finally got Patrick into a courtroom for his discharge hearing, where my lawyer quietly, calmly and professionally, tore him six new kinds of asshole. I will not get into detail, as you can draw your own conclusion of the bankruptcy registrar based on her ruling posted here. In particular, I draw your attention to the judge's unambiguous smackdown:
wherein the judge leaves no doubt about Ross' culpability -- the word "reprehensible" figures prominently, as you can see. And it's here where the story drags to its painful, Bataan death march of a conclusion.
Predictably, Patrick Ross filed an appeal -- an appeal which, when shown to various legal people who actually understood law, left each and every one of them gasping with laughter, tears streaming down their faces.
It will suffice to point out that Patrick's primary appeal argument is that, since he chose not to even defend against the original defamation claim in Ontario back in 2010, it would be unfair for the Saskatchewan Court of Bankruptcy to hold him accountable for the fallout of that default judgment since, well, after all, those claims had never been tested in court. In short, Patrick Ross chose not to defend against the original claim, and he was now using that lack of defence as his defence.
The mind reels. But ... onward.
Now, despite the utter worthlessness of Patrick Ross' initial filing of an appeal, it did suffice to get his case into the pipeline for appeals, one of whose consequences was to put an immediate stay on Ross' legal obligation to start paying the court-ordered $200/month to his trustee for the next 14 years -- a consequence I suspect Ross was counting on and, sure enough, those payments were put on hold until the appeal could be heard and resolved. And it's here where the real entertainment begins.
Because, you see, this is when the court explained to Patrick Ross that his initial filing of an appeal was hopelessly deficient, and he needed to come back with an appeal in proper form, which required things like a Notice of Application and other interesting documents, before a court date could be set. And it was at that point that Patrick Ross probably began to realize that maybe he was in a bit over his head. As my lawyer wrote to me (and I quote, verbatim):
[The Registrar has] since talked with [Patrick] again, told him what the filing requirements are (he supposed to file a Notice of Application in the proper form), and given him some other possible dates later down the road. Since he wanted 'to think about it', she's put the file away until he gets back to her. He also hasn't filed his 'Brief of Law' with the Court. Guess he expects the Judge to learn his arguments through telepathy.
Which brings us to the very last chapter in this sorry, sorry saga. At this point, Patrick Ross' initial filing of an appeal, while ridiculously deficient, was still enough to put the payment plan on hold, and until Patrick gets back to the Registrar with either all of the proper legal documents (or, conversely, withdraws his appeal), everyone is now waiting for him to jump one way or the other. And I suspect this is precisely what Patrick had in mind -- file just enough to gum up the works, then walk away, having stalled the entire payment plan. And I'm sure Patrick Ross is feeling amazingly smug about how he's beaten the system once again.
Not surprisingly, my lawyer pointed out that you can't just delay this sort of thing forever, and that, after a certain amount of time, if Patrick hasn't submitted the proper paperwork, she could file to have Patrick's appeal treated as "abandoned." And it's here where I'm going to do Patrick Ross the humongous favour of telling him precisely what I plan on doing to rectify this situation.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And here's why.
As it is, Patrick Ross is currently a 33-year-old (UPDATE: now 34-year-old) undischarged bankrupt university dropout, living at home with his parents and looking at 14 years of being an undischarged bankrupt, followed by six (maybe seven, I can never remember which) more years of being a discharged bankrupt. Quite simply, for someone who considers himself the smartest and baddest motherfucker on the Intertoobz, Patrick Ross is looking at dealing with the consequences of his malicious defamation of me, civil judgment and subsequent personal bankruptcy until he is well into his fifties. But that's not the sad part of this.
The truly sad part of this is that I have been assured by my lawyer that, while Patrick Ross is undoubtedly crowing about how clever he is at having his appeal postpone his legal obligation to start making payments, it has also prevented the 14-year payment clock from even starting to tick. In other words, while Patrick dawdles on what to do regarding his appeal, all he is accomplishing is pushing the consequences of his bankruptcy, day by day, further into his old age.
It is precisely for that reason that I instructed my Saskatchewan lawyer that under no circumstances is she to expend any time or effort to track down Patrick Ross or push to have his appeal brought before the court. No, I have instructed her to take his file and put it in a back drawer somewhere, and leave it there. Because, to be frank, I can survive quite nicely without that $200/month, and if Patrick Ross wants to languish as an undischarged bankrupt for the rest of his life, I have no problem with that and he has my blessing.
So here endeth the story. I'm getting on with my life (which involves travelling the world, eating well and drinking really good gin), my lawyer is stuffing the Patrick Ross file into a box, and Patrick is free to spend the rest of his days living in his parents' basement, tweeting about pro wrestling and which upcoming Marvel Comics Avenger movie he looks forward to the most, stocking shelves at the Lloydminster lumber store he works at, and getting used to living without a credit card or a credit record of any kind, never being able to get a bank loan or a mortgage. And if he's happy to be there, I'm happy to leave him there.
The end.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Pierre Poilievre and the mythical "irregularities"
It's aggravating to listen to Minister for Smug Assholishness Pierre "Skippy" Poilievre rail on about voting "irregularities" in the last federal election when that talking point is so easily slapped onto a cutting board and disemboweled.
Here's Skippy, making his constant claim:
And what about the alleged 50,000 irregularities tied to vouching? I am unable to find the number "50,000" anywhere in the Neufeld report, but I don't need to, as Poilievre conveniently admits that "there were 165,000 irregularities, including 50,000 linked to vouching", which means that the argument I just made above already covers Poilievre's relentless shrieking about vouching.
Neufeld identified 165,000 irregularities (which Poilievre openly admits includes his precious vouching), and clearly claimed that it was fault of election officials; Pierre Poilievre carefully reads the first part of that sentence, then deliberately stops reading because he doesn't like how it ends.
That's lying.
Class dismissed.
Here's Skippy, making his constant claim:
"Poilievre and other Conservative MPs have argued Canada's election system is ripe for voter fraud and that there were 165,000 irregularities, including 50,000 linked to vouching, in the 2011 federal election, citing a report by Neufeld."Hey, I know ... let's go see where Harry Neufeld got that first number of "165,000" ... ah, here it is [emphasis tail-waggingly added]:
"More than 12 million Canadian citizens cast ballots on May 2, 2011 and the audit indicates that the applications of specific legal safeguards, in place to ensure each elector is actually eligible to vote, were seriously deficient in more than 165,000 cases due to systemic errors made by election officials. Averaged across 308 ridings, election officers made over 500 serious administrative errors per electoral district on Election Day."Now go back and read the highlighted part again ... I'll wait. And do you see what's happening here? While Neufeld does indeed claim 165,000 errors or irregularities, he places the blame quite clearly on the election officials or election officers, not the voters. And this is where Pierre Poilievre is shown to be the unprincipled, pathological liar that he is, since it's unconscionable to continue to quote Neufeld's number of 165,000 errors while deliberately ignoring the very next few words in the same sentence which change completely the meaning of that number. Harry Neufeld is not blaming the voters, he is blaming the officials, and for Poilievre to deliberately distort this is simply dishonesty of the highest order.
And what about the alleged 50,000 irregularities tied to vouching? I am unable to find the number "50,000" anywhere in the Neufeld report, but I don't need to, as Poilievre conveniently admits that "there were 165,000 irregularities, including 50,000 linked to vouching", which means that the argument I just made above already covers Poilievre's relentless shrieking about vouching.
Neufeld identified 165,000 irregularities (which Poilievre openly admits includes his precious vouching), and clearly claimed that it was fault of election officials; Pierre Poilievre carefully reads the first part of that sentence, then deliberately stops reading because he doesn't like how it ends.
That's lying.
Class dismissed.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
This is the way a lawsuit ends ... not with a bang but a whimper.
Final update as of December 4, 2012: Submitted without comment.
(UPDATE, AUG 11: Scroll to bottom.)
I've tried to stay above this fray and let the legal proceedings properly play themselves out, but I've become increasingly irritated with the asinine misinformation that's currently being spewed by a couple dimwits who should know better, so while I will do my best to remain mature about this, I'm going to emphatically correct the record. And at the end of this post, I'll have homework for you, so stick around.
(UPDATE, AUG 11: Scroll to bottom.)
I've tried to stay above this fray and let the legal proceedings properly play themselves out, but I've become increasingly irritated with the asinine misinformation that's currently being spewed by a couple dimwits who should know better, so while I will do my best to remain mature about this, I'm going to emphatically correct the record. And at the end of this post, I'll have homework for you, so stick around.
If you have no idea what this is all about, this will hit the highlights, and way more detail can be found in the most recent posts at this very blog. I have no intention of being tediously repetitive, but I'll make sure there's no confusion about what we're discussing here; that is, that mouthy U of Alberta frat boi Patrick "Kid Cash Thunderbolt Nexus of Assholery" Ross, in late 2010, was found to have defamed me (maliciously so, I might add), to the extent that I was awarded $75,000 in general damages and an additional $10,000 in costs by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Now, just to dampen the suspense, let me assure you that that judgment (long since registered in Patrick Ross' home province of Alberta for the purpose of enforcement) is still in effect, so absolutely nothing has changed with respect to the fact that Patrick Ross now owes me around $90,000, but that's not why we're here. No, let's talk about that annoying misinformation.
First, there's the rumour (perpetrated by someone who should know better) that since this was a "default" judgment -- given that Patrick Ross, for whatever reason, chose not to file a defence -- my Statement of Claim was never judged on its "merits," and that I was somehow gifted with this judgment just by having my lawyer show up in court. This is rubbish.
This bit of idiocy was first proposed by an online personality who goes by the handle of "Marky Mark", whose nad-grinding, thigh-sucking ignorance of simple Canadian law is made even more astonishing by the fact that he is apparently an actual practicing lawyer. Early in this process, many, many educated people attempted to explain the concept of a "default judgment" to Marky, apparently to no avail, perhaps leaving readers back then with the impression that I just massively lucked out. If you don't understand what nonsense this is, feel free to chat with someone who has a proper legal education, and I'm sure they will set you straight as I'm not inclined to spend the time doing that. The judgment -- as you can read -- was unambiguous: I was not only defamed, but I was defamed maliciously. So saith the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. End of discussion. But we're not done here. Back to the misinformation.
Unbelievably, even more idiotic misinformation was disseminated by the aforementioned Marky Mark -- to wit, that I, being the dastardly successful businessman that I am, had taken advantage of a naive, unprepared university undergraduate who was simply overwhelmed by the "complexities" of the Canadian legal system. Let me put that myth to rest, if I may.
It's actually easily discoverable on the Intertoobz that, at the time of this writing, malicious defamer Patrick Ross is 31 years old, by which one can easily deduce that he was, at the very least, in his late 20s when he began his online campaign of blatant defamation against me, so trying to dismiss Patrick Ross' online smears of me as some sort of youthful indiscretion doesn't really hold up. Add to that that it wasn't just a single libel of me, but month after month after relentless month of accusations of my criminality. (When my lawyer finally served Blogger Support with the judgment to facilitate the removal of any and all blog posts of Patrick's referring to me, there were well in excess of 200 of them. I leave it to the reader to judge the creepy obsessiveness of Patrick's smear campaign.)
As for Marky Mark's plaintive lament that Patrick Ross was somehow blindsided by the "complexities" of the legal system, well, hello, that's what lawyers are for, which is why I hired one -- because I am not an idiot. Patrick Ross, on the other hand, lost no opportunity to publicly brag about his dizzying legal intellect and how, with his years of undergraduate education, he was, all by his lonesome, going to thrash me soundly in a court of law. At which point he failed to file a Statement of Defence and, in short, it ended badly for him. So to paint Patrick Ross as a dimwitted young'un who had no idea what he was getting into, well, that scenario falls apart pretty quickly. But we're not done here. Oh no, not yet.
As anyone who has been following this sordid saga knows, I have spent the last year and a half chasing Patrick Ross around Alberta in order to enforce this judgment, and Patrick has made it anything but easy. I'm not going to get into details of the legal pleadings that have gone back and forth, but since it's in the public record if one would but look, I feel safe in mentioning that Patrick, because of his stupidity or intransigence, now owes me another $2,000+ in court costs for simply failing to obey the Court's instructions, and he has been found in Contempt of Court once already. But that's not the capper.
The most egregious misrepresentation recently is Patrick Ross' public bragging that he has (in some unexplained and mysterious way) checked with a lawyer, and has been told that he doesn't need to pay me. Let me assure you that that boasting comes as a complete surprise to my lawyer and myself, since neither of us have any idea what sort of legal wizardry would lead one to that conclusion. Let me recap: I was awarded a default judgment in November of 2010, and Patrick Ross has spent the time since then knowing fully the details of that judgment, and doing absolutely nothing about it. If you don't understand the consequences of what I just wrote, I suggest you ask a lawyer buddy. And there's one more point.
On at least one occasion, Patrick Ross has publicly promised that he has absolutely no intention of paying a penny of this judgment. (And as of right now, that's precisely what he's paid -- not a penny.) Patrick's position is that this judgment is terribly, terribly unfair and expensive, which is a fairly novel legal defence. However, Patrick's personal outrage aside, I can once again assure you that the judgment is solidly intact, and it's not going anywhere, so until Patrick can come up with what he owes me, his life is going to be fairly uncomfortable as this judgment will follow him wherever he goes. And here's your homework assignment.
Rumour has it that Patrick might be relocating from Edmonton back to his home planet of Lloydminster, AB, and this is where you come in. Since no one trusts Patrick to come clean about any new employment he gets, if you happen to run across Patrick and he has a new job and actual income, by all means, drop me a note at canadiancynic@yahoo.ca. Since Patrick Ross has made it clear he's not going to deal with this judgment voluntarily, the only option I have left is to have the courts deal with it for me.
Once upon a time, Patrick Ross had more than enough chances to make this ugliness go away quietly, and he chose to double down each time and make things worse. Patrick Ross made his bed, then proceeded to shit in it over and over and over; now he's complaining about the smell. That's unfortunate, but it represents choices Patrick Ross made all on his own.
As of right now, Patrick Ross owes me in the neighbourhood of $90,000, and that amount is increasing by the day. And I'm pretty sure Patrick refusing to pay it simply because he doesn't want to isn't going to end well for one of us.
So if you run into Patrick (Twitter: @OutlawTory) Ross, say hi, and ask him when he thinks he's going to start paying up. Because not paying is simply not an option.
P.S. While I'm going to leave the comments section open, I will absolutely not tolerate anyone attempting to retry this case. It's over, I have my judgment and that's the end of it. If you want to argue about the legal machinations and why you disagree with them, take it elsewhere. I'm just not interested.
UPPITY DATE (AUG 11, 2012): Yesterday was a rather amusing day in the Twitter-sphere, as numerous excitable folk piled on malicious defamer Patrick Ross for, well, being so stupid and/or incompetent and/or arrogant as to have never filed a Statement of Defence in the legal action under discussion. Patrick's excuse for this devastating oversight was so eye-rollingly disingenuous that it needs to have its panties yanked down and spanked in public. (Nothing here is going to be new information, I will just be summarizing what's already out there in the public domain.)
As I once explained here, Patrick Ross was given oodles and heaps and loads of time to properly file his defence. Given that an inter-provincial Statement of Claim allows the respondent 40 days for such a filing, my lawyer was more than generous in giving Ross a full three months to get his ducks in a row and whip something up that the Court would find acceptable. After those three months, and not having heard a peep from said respondent during the last month of that, my Ontario lawyer gave up and properly filed to place Patrick Ross in default and the rest, as they say, is legal history.
As you can read at that link above, Patrick Ross claims that he did file a defence, but openly admits that he did it incorrectly and (as is his pattern) currently blames someone else -- "incorrect instructions from a court clerk." As I have explained and documented before, after dicking around and wasting everyone's time, Patrick Ross was given a hard deadline of September 15, 2010 to file a defence. And as you can see, in a demonstration of stupefying bone-headedness, Patrick Ross apparently chose to wait until that very last day to make the attempt, guaranteeing that if anything at all went wrong, he would be totally and utterly screwed. But wait ... there's more.
Once Patrick Ross learned of his colossal fuck-up, the obvious reaction from a sane human being would normally be to scramble to try to set things right, and file (properly, perhaps with the assistance of an actual lawyer) to overturn ASAP. And as you can read from that earlier link, Patrick Ross chose not to do that. Rather, he chose to simply disappear from view without making the slightest attempt to salvage the situation. Again, that was Patrick's self-represented choice, and a colossally stupid one it was. But here's the capper.
During all of this, since the very beginning in early 2010 when Patrick Ross was served with a Notice of Libel, Patrick chose not to hire a lawyer, which was his right. And in all that time, Patrick Ross bragged publicly to one and all about his razor-sharp legal mind, suggesting he didn't need a lawyer. But here's the thing -- if you choose to forego educated and competent legal counsel, you don't then get to complain about how badly things went because you got "incorrect instructions from a court clerk." It doesn't work that way.
Put more succinctly, if you choose to represent yourself in court, you really shouldn't then complain about getting unbelievably stupid legal advice.
P.S. And I notice practicing lawyer and attention whore "Marky Mark" is still carrying Patrick Ross' water. And, yes, that's a euphemism. And we may not be done with "Marky Mark" here.
P.P.S. While this might seem like piling on unnecessarily, a couple more observations would appear to be in order. First, despite Patrick Ross' open admission that he's been aware of this default judgment for well over a year, he has never filed to overturn, despite promising to do so on a number of occasions.
In addition, both of my lawyers -- the Ontario lawyer who won my judgment, and the Alberta lawyer who is representing me in the enforcement proceedings -- have, on my instruction, strongly encouraged Patrick Ross to hire a lawyer to represent him. To this day, he does not appear to have taken that advice, with unsurprising results.
If more misinformation continues to be spewed, I will deal with it appropriately.
Now, just to dampen the suspense, let me assure you that that judgment (long since registered in Patrick Ross' home province of Alberta for the purpose of enforcement) is still in effect, so absolutely nothing has changed with respect to the fact that Patrick Ross now owes me around $90,000, but that's not why we're here. No, let's talk about that annoying misinformation.
First, there's the rumour (perpetrated by someone who should know better) that since this was a "default" judgment -- given that Patrick Ross, for whatever reason, chose not to file a defence -- my Statement of Claim was never judged on its "merits," and that I was somehow gifted with this judgment just by having my lawyer show up in court. This is rubbish.
This bit of idiocy was first proposed by an online personality who goes by the handle of "Marky Mark", whose nad-grinding, thigh-sucking ignorance of simple Canadian law is made even more astonishing by the fact that he is apparently an actual practicing lawyer. Early in this process, many, many educated people attempted to explain the concept of a "default judgment" to Marky, apparently to no avail, perhaps leaving readers back then with the impression that I just massively lucked out. If you don't understand what nonsense this is, feel free to chat with someone who has a proper legal education, and I'm sure they will set you straight as I'm not inclined to spend the time doing that. The judgment -- as you can read -- was unambiguous: I was not only defamed, but I was defamed maliciously. So saith the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. End of discussion. But we're not done here. Back to the misinformation.
Unbelievably, even more idiotic misinformation was disseminated by the aforementioned Marky Mark -- to wit, that I, being the dastardly successful businessman that I am, had taken advantage of a naive, unprepared university undergraduate who was simply overwhelmed by the "complexities" of the Canadian legal system. Let me put that myth to rest, if I may.
It's actually easily discoverable on the Intertoobz that, at the time of this writing, malicious defamer Patrick Ross is 31 years old, by which one can easily deduce that he was, at the very least, in his late 20s when he began his online campaign of blatant defamation against me, so trying to dismiss Patrick Ross' online smears of me as some sort of youthful indiscretion doesn't really hold up. Add to that that it wasn't just a single libel of me, but month after month after relentless month of accusations of my criminality. (When my lawyer finally served Blogger Support with the judgment to facilitate the removal of any and all blog posts of Patrick's referring to me, there were well in excess of 200 of them. I leave it to the reader to judge the creepy obsessiveness of Patrick's smear campaign.)
As for Marky Mark's plaintive lament that Patrick Ross was somehow blindsided by the "complexities" of the legal system, well, hello, that's what lawyers are for, which is why I hired one -- because I am not an idiot. Patrick Ross, on the other hand, lost no opportunity to publicly brag about his dizzying legal intellect and how, with his years of undergraduate education, he was, all by his lonesome, going to thrash me soundly in a court of law. At which point he failed to file a Statement of Defence and, in short, it ended badly for him. So to paint Patrick Ross as a dimwitted young'un who had no idea what he was getting into, well, that scenario falls apart pretty quickly. But we're not done here. Oh no, not yet.
As anyone who has been following this sordid saga knows, I have spent the last year and a half chasing Patrick Ross around Alberta in order to enforce this judgment, and Patrick has made it anything but easy. I'm not going to get into details of the legal pleadings that have gone back and forth, but since it's in the public record if one would but look, I feel safe in mentioning that Patrick, because of his stupidity or intransigence, now owes me another $2,000+ in court costs for simply failing to obey the Court's instructions, and he has been found in Contempt of Court once already. But that's not the capper.
The most egregious misrepresentation recently is Patrick Ross' public bragging that he has (in some unexplained and mysterious way) checked with a lawyer, and has been told that he doesn't need to pay me. Let me assure you that that boasting comes as a complete surprise to my lawyer and myself, since neither of us have any idea what sort of legal wizardry would lead one to that conclusion. Let me recap: I was awarded a default judgment in November of 2010, and Patrick Ross has spent the time since then knowing fully the details of that judgment, and doing absolutely nothing about it. If you don't understand the consequences of what I just wrote, I suggest you ask a lawyer buddy. And there's one more point.
On at least one occasion, Patrick Ross has publicly promised that he has absolutely no intention of paying a penny of this judgment. (And as of right now, that's precisely what he's paid -- not a penny.) Patrick's position is that this judgment is terribly, terribly unfair and expensive, which is a fairly novel legal defence. However, Patrick's personal outrage aside, I can once again assure you that the judgment is solidly intact, and it's not going anywhere, so until Patrick can come up with what he owes me, his life is going to be fairly uncomfortable as this judgment will follow him wherever he goes. And here's your homework assignment.
Rumour has it that Patrick might be relocating from Edmonton back to his home planet of Lloydminster, AB, and this is where you come in. Since no one trusts Patrick to come clean about any new employment he gets, if you happen to run across Patrick and he has a new job and actual income, by all means, drop me a note at canadiancynic@yahoo.ca. Since Patrick Ross has made it clear he's not going to deal with this judgment voluntarily, the only option I have left is to have the courts deal with it for me.
Once upon a time, Patrick Ross had more than enough chances to make this ugliness go away quietly, and he chose to double down each time and make things worse. Patrick Ross made his bed, then proceeded to shit in it over and over and over; now he's complaining about the smell. That's unfortunate, but it represents choices Patrick Ross made all on his own.
As of right now, Patrick Ross owes me in the neighbourhood of $90,000, and that amount is increasing by the day. And I'm pretty sure Patrick refusing to pay it simply because he doesn't want to isn't going to end well for one of us.
So if you run into Patrick (Twitter: @OutlawTory) Ross, say hi, and ask him when he thinks he's going to start paying up. Because not paying is simply not an option.
P.S. While I'm going to leave the comments section open, I will absolutely not tolerate anyone attempting to retry this case. It's over, I have my judgment and that's the end of it. If you want to argue about the legal machinations and why you disagree with them, take it elsewhere. I'm just not interested.
UPPITY DATE (AUG 11, 2012): Yesterday was a rather amusing day in the Twitter-sphere, as numerous excitable folk piled on malicious defamer Patrick Ross for, well, being so stupid and/or incompetent and/or arrogant as to have never filed a Statement of Defence in the legal action under discussion. Patrick's excuse for this devastating oversight was so eye-rollingly disingenuous that it needs to have its panties yanked down and spanked in public. (Nothing here is going to be new information, I will just be summarizing what's already out there in the public domain.)
As I once explained here, Patrick Ross was given oodles and heaps and loads of time to properly file his defence. Given that an inter-provincial Statement of Claim allows the respondent 40 days for such a filing, my lawyer was more than generous in giving Ross a full three months to get his ducks in a row and whip something up that the Court would find acceptable. After those three months, and not having heard a peep from said respondent during the last month of that, my Ontario lawyer gave up and properly filed to place Patrick Ross in default and the rest, as they say, is legal history.
As you can read at that link above, Patrick Ross claims that he did file a defence, but openly admits that he did it incorrectly and (as is his pattern) currently blames someone else -- "incorrect instructions from a court clerk." As I have explained and documented before, after dicking around and wasting everyone's time, Patrick Ross was given a hard deadline of September 15, 2010 to file a defence. And as you can see, in a demonstration of stupefying bone-headedness, Patrick Ross apparently chose to wait until that very last day to make the attempt, guaranteeing that if anything at all went wrong, he would be totally and utterly screwed. But wait ... there's more.
Once Patrick Ross learned of his colossal fuck-up, the obvious reaction from a sane human being would normally be to scramble to try to set things right, and file (properly, perhaps with the assistance of an actual lawyer) to overturn ASAP. And as you can read from that earlier link, Patrick Ross chose not to do that. Rather, he chose to simply disappear from view without making the slightest attempt to salvage the situation. Again, that was Patrick's self-represented choice, and a colossally stupid one it was. But here's the capper.
During all of this, since the very beginning in early 2010 when Patrick Ross was served with a Notice of Libel, Patrick chose not to hire a lawyer, which was his right. And in all that time, Patrick Ross bragged publicly to one and all about his razor-sharp legal mind, suggesting he didn't need a lawyer. But here's the thing -- if you choose to forego educated and competent legal counsel, you don't then get to complain about how badly things went because you got "incorrect instructions from a court clerk." It doesn't work that way.
Put more succinctly, if you choose to represent yourself in court, you really shouldn't then complain about getting unbelievably stupid legal advice.
P.S. And I notice practicing lawyer and attention whore "Marky Mark" is still carrying Patrick Ross' water. And, yes, that's a euphemism. And we may not be done with "Marky Mark" here.
P.P.S. While this might seem like piling on unnecessarily, a couple more observations would appear to be in order. First, despite Patrick Ross' open admission that he's been aware of this default judgment for well over a year, he has never filed to overturn, despite promising to do so on a number of occasions.
In addition, both of my lawyers -- the Ontario lawyer who won my judgment, and the Alberta lawyer who is representing me in the enforcement proceedings -- have, on my instruction, strongly encouraged Patrick Ross to hire a lawyer to represent him. To this day, he does not appear to have taken that advice, with unsurprising results.
If more misinformation continues to be spewed, I will deal with it appropriately.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
"The court hereby orders ..."
It has been brought to my attention that malicious defamer and $85,000 (default judgment) man Patrick Ross is currently crowing about how his recent ordered appearance in a Calgary courtroom represents some sort of victory for him.
I am deliberately not going to get into the detail of the resulting order, but I can assure you I'm satisfied with what went down and I'm going to leave it at that for now. When it's safe to tell you more, I'll do just that.
P.S. To no one's surprise, no "crimes" were reported at that hearing. But I figure you'd already guessed that.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Patrick Ross versus the legal system.
Since I had been giving readers a regular countdown to malicious defamer Patrick Ross' required March 6 appearance in a Calgary courtroom, it now behooves me to describe (for the most part) what happened yesterday, as explained to me over the phone by my Calgary lawyer. There are a few parts still waiting on clarification, but I'll fill those in when they come in. For now, I'm going to stick to the simple facts with a minimum of editorializing.
To set the stage, you should read Patrick Ross' recent heart-tugging plea for sympathy, and decide how seriously you want to take it. You should then follow that up with my earlier, brief discussion of what happened. And now, to complete the story as best I can while still waiting for the judge's official endorsement.
First, as you can see from my earlier post, Patrick Ross simply lied in court on two fundamental points. And despite the fact that my lawyer had incontrovertible evidence in the way of affidavits and screenshots, the judge inexplicably chose to give Patrick Ross the benefit of the doubt. However, this is only a minor annoyance as he can only play that card once; it will never work again.
The consequence of the above is that Patrick Ross now has an equally inexplicably generous 45 days to fill out and return the required Statement of Debtor Form. Again, a minor annoyance since this allows Patrick Ross to drag out these proceedings even further. However, since he has already demonstrated that he is perfectly comfortable lying in court, we will be fact-checking that Statement of Debtor Form very carefully indeed. In short, the next hard deadline is 45 days from yesterday, at which time Patrick Ross must have produced a completed Statement of Debtor Form, or he will be required once again to appear in a Calgary courtroom to explain why he should not be found in contempt of court. But there's one more thing that is a bit puzzling.
As explained to me by my lawyer (and it's entirely possible I'm misinterpreting what he said), the judge decreed that Patrick Ross would have the right to file to overturn the default judgment. Which sounds like a victory for Patrick, except for the following.
He has always had that right.
Nothing has ever stopped Patrick from filing a motion to overturn the judgment. In fact, Patrick himself publicly announced last year that he was in the process of doing just that, and even posted a copy of the motion he had prepared, only to be told that he couldn't file it remotely as he was trying to do. Rather, if Patrick Ross wants to file to overturn the judgment, that must (as I have been told) be done here in Ontario where the judgment was awarded, and must be done either by Patrick personally or by an Ontario lawyer he hires to represent him.
If this is indeed the case (as I believe it is, until shown otherwise), then it's not at all clear what that Calgary judge was going on about. As long as I understand this properly, Patrick can file a motion to overturn whenever he wants, with or without the blessing of that apparently misinformed judge. And whether that motion is successful will be determined here in Ontario, mercifully without her input. I'm still waiting for clarification on what exactly the judge was saying, and when I get it, I'll let you know.
In short, Patrick Ross appeared in a Calgary courtroom yesterday and, from this point on, he has no excuses left. He has 45 days to complete and submit a Statement of Debtor Form listing all his worldly assets, and if he tries to overturn the judgment, he will either have to travel to Ontario, or (finally) hire a lawyer to represent him. At the moment, nothing about the judgment has changed, and he still owes me $85,000 plus accruing costs.
More later as it arrives.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Well, this is an interesting development.
I refer, of course, to this. And while I wait for my lawyer to see how I should respond, I will comment on one aspect that should be safe since it's in the public record.
I refer to this claim by Patrick Ross:
This was a judgement which, by the way, I still have yet to ever actually see. Despite the fact that I have asked for it to be shared with me. And at the point this blogpost was written, I had yet to hear so much as a murmur from the plaintiff's counsel regarding this matter. Nor did I hear so much as a murmur from the plaintiff's counsel for months after.
I now refer the reader to Google Docs here, specifically page 15 of that collection of documents, where one can read the affidavit of one Darren Campbell, process server, swearing that he did in fact personally serve one Patrick Ross on April 29, 2011 with a true copy of the original order.
And I will leave it at that for now.
P.S. The Patrick Ross currently painting himself as crushingly depressed, unproductive and emotionally incapacitated for so long is the same Patrick Ross who still managed to drag himself to his computer and maliciously defame me day after day, week after week and month after month. I don't buy this bullshit for a second. And neither should you.
UPDATE THE FIRST: I feel at liberty to post at least the following. In court, and under oath, Patrick Ross claimed that:
- He had never received a copy of the original November, 2010 judgment, and
- He had never received a Statement of Debtor Form to fill out.
In order to demonstrate the falsity of those two claims (again, made under oath in a court of law), I refer the reader to the following set of legal documents, where one can read:
- With respect to the first claim, I direct the reader to p. 15, an affidavit showing personal service of the judgment on Patrick Ross by one Darren Campbell on April 29, 2011, and
- on that same page, proof of service of a Statement of Debtor Form by the same server on the same date.
In addition, I draw the reader's attention to pp. 12-13 of the same set of documents, showing e-mail correspondence in which Patrick Ross claims to have already mailed in the same Statement of Debtor Form he now denies ever having received.
Inexplicably, the judge chose to believe Patrick Ross rather than the affidavits supplied by my lawyer, the end result being that things will be delayed slightly but no real harm done.
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