RICHARDWARMAN.CA

Welcome to the official website of Canadian human rights lawyer Richard Warman.

Latest:

19 May 2019
Just because.

9 May 2019
Mack Lamoureux of VICE Canada has published an expose of the fact that the City of Hamilton has been employing former neo-Nazi leader Marc Lemire for years. My concerns about things that need to be considered when looking at the issue are here.

6 May 2019
Glenn Bogue, the Law Society of Ontario, the Law Society Tribunal, and the
Theatre of the Absurd. I didn’t think it could get worse in terms of how far the Law Society of Ontario/Law Society Tribunal hearings into unprofessional conduct by sometime lawyer Glenn Bogue have come off the rails – but I was wrong.

30 March 2019

Toronto criminal defence lawyer David Faed finally cited by Law Society for unprofessional conduct for advertising in neo-Nazi tabloid Your Ward News – more here.

9 February 2019

i. The expert report on the anti-women hatred from James Sears and Leroy St Germaine that filled Toronto tabloid Your Ward News can be found here. Many thanks to Professor Janine Benedet of the University of British Columbia faculty of law for her work in assisting the criminal prosecution.

ii. I note with sadness the death of former Ottawa Member of Parliament Paul Dewar. I had the honour of receiving my Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal from Paul and extend my condolences to his family.

iii. A murderer in Quebec inspired by hate propaganda has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing of six men at a Quebec City mosque in 2017. Statement from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network here.

2 February 2019

On 24 January 2019, Justice Richard Blouin found James Sears and Leroy St Germaine guilty of the wilful promotion of hatred against women and the Jewish community as a result of their hate propaganda published in Toronto tabloid Your Ward News. As part of the criminal prosecution, the Crown Prosecutors obtained an expert report from Professor Derek Penslar of the University of Toronto (and Harvard) that dissected the anti-Jewish hate propaganda and placed it in its historical context – more details here.

20 January 2019

Observations from suspended OPCA lawyer Glenn Bogue’s Law Society Tribunal hearings in Ottawa on 7/8 January 2019 – details here.

19 January 2019

Dentist Kin Fong of Smile Design Ottawa is now a convicted criminal as a result of involving himself in detax schemes – full story here.

29 December 2018

2 Wilfrid Laurier U profs sue Lindsay Shepherd

Under the heading of ‘least surprising news ever’, two Wilfrid Laurier profs who were secretly recorded by ‘self-inflicted wounds’ former teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd have reportedly
cross-sued Shepherd in response to a lawsuit by dubious U of T prof
Jordan Peterson. Shepherd secretly taped Wilfrid Laurier University Profs Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott criticizing Peterson and expressing concern to Shepherd that she had shown a video of Peterson in class where she was a TA. Shepherd then shopped the audio to media.

Peterson, unhappy with the criticism, launched a libel action against Wilfrid Laurier University and their academics.

When Wilfrid Laurier issued a press release confirming the filing of their statement of defence and its contents, Peterson the Petulant free speech advocate then filed another libel action against the University.

In this article and others about the original or subsequent lawsuits, counsel for both Peterson and Shepherd derides Wilfrid Laurier’s defence that Peterson should sue Shepherd for any damages given she’s the one who secretly recorded the meeting, broadcast it to the world through the media, and also reportedly consulted with Peterson before publishing the audio in which the academics criticized Peterson. Peterson and Shepherd’s lawyer is also reported as wondering why Rambukkana and Pimlott wouldn’t cross-sue the media who reported on the audio as well as Shepherd for publishing the defamatory remarks.

These arguments by counsel for Peterson and Shepherd demonstrate a weak understanding of the law of defamation given that Shepherd was the one responsible for publication of the audio to the media, and that any republication by the media would likely be covered by the defences of qualified privilege and/or responsible communication.

Lindsay herself admits that she was responsible for the media republishing the audio saying that after she shopped it to them, Global News posted excerpts and the National Post posted the full clip.

Lindsay Shepherd
@NewWorldHominin
Global News first released an excerpt version, and actually never asked me if that was OK. Then National Post released a full version on Soundcloud and copies were uploaded after by various accounts to Youtube. 6:55 PM – 31 Aug 2018

To be honest, it beggars belief for someone in a university graduate studies programme to claim they couldn’t figure out that the media might publicize an audio recording you give them to help publicize your case. In any event, lawyers for Wilfrid Laurier University have brought a motion to dismiss the action by Peterson as Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.

More to follow undoubtedly but in the meantime…

7 December 2018

Pete Shelley – lead singer of seminal punk band the Buzzcocks – RIP.

1 December 2018
Poor Dean Clifford, last substantive Freeman on the Land standing and still can’t get no respect. Now declared a vexatious litigant in Alberta in a case that he was playing puppet master for his latest victim, one Vanessa Landry who is also now a vexatious litigant for the sin of buying into and repeating Clifford’s nonsense.

Burnaby49 on the Quatloos website has as good a commentary as I might make, so it’s worth simply writing ditto.

The actual declaration by Justice Thomas of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench can be found here. Costs against Landry _and_ Clifford – ouch! Poor Dean…

29 October 2018

On the libel action launched by former UBC creative writing Chair Steven Galloway

A friendly asked me today what I made of the decision by former UBC prof Steven Galloway to sue a bunch of people who had made or repeated allegations of sexual assault against him in relation to a former student. Galloway was subsequently dismissed by UBC.

I didn’t know much about Galloway or the incidents at UBC apart from limited media articles I’d read previously, but tonight I read the claim and some of the surrounding background. I’m far from having engaged in an exhaustive study, but I sent the following thoughts to my friend:

1. Many of the defendants who are being sued for comments from 2015-2016 will raise defences that those issues are beyond the 2-year statute of limitations in BC for civil actions and that Galloway can’t bootstrap subsequent comments by others to get around that. Also that Galloway’s allegation that he couldn’t take civil action until now because of UBC-related investigations may not hold up either.

2. Galloway has top-flight legal counsel who has a great deal of experience about libel actions.

3. If the Statement of Claim is accurate, defendants who made recent (ie. 2018), outright claims of rape while naming Galloway on Twitter put themselves at some pretty substantial legal risk that I would seek legal advice on ASAP.

4. If the lawsuit goes ahead, the full investigative report into the incidents by Justice Mary Ellen Boyd will likely be filed in Court and become public – this may affect people’s positions depending on what it says.

5. BC has introduced anti-SLAPP legislation that passed First Reading in the legislature on 15 May 2018 and can be found here.

– Section 2 of the Bill mandates that if the Bill is passed, it will affect existing lawsuits that are ongoing and future lawsuits:

“This Act applies in respect of proceedings commenced at any time before or after this Act comes into force.”

– under those circumstances, I would anticipate that the day after the anti-SLAPP Bill becomes law that any defendants in the suit will bring motions to dismiss Galloway’s action as a SLAPP suit. The Bill mirrors similar anti-SLAPP legislation in Ontario and it provides a very high hurdle to successfully pursuing libel actions and carries substantial costs consequences against plaintiffs whose actions are dismissed. Libel litigation can usually be measured in years, so presuming the Bill will eventually pass, it will expose Galloway to a fair bit of legal risk when (if) it does. If it passes, the legal risk would be so high that I think that fine line between brave/foolhardy litigant would be engaged.

So, for what it’s worth, that’s what I think about the Steven Galloway libel lawsuit…

22 September 2018

It’s a party – congratulations to my former lawyer Pam MacEachern who was sworn in as a Judge of the Superior Court of Ontario yesterday!

Best known for lots of stuff, but my personal favourites are for taking on anti-Jewish haters as counsel for the Canadian Human Rights Commission in Warman v Kyburz, bigoted defamers like disgraced ex-teacher Paul Fromm, or providing the initial legal opinion in successfully overturning a Canadian donation of roughly $250,000 to US neo-Nazi group the National Alliance.

Rock the Bench!

10 August 2018

Convicted criminal and British Columbia resident Arthur Topham has been arrested this week for breach of probation conditions that he stop spreading hate propaganda through the Internet. The probation conditions stem from his 2017 conviction for spreading anti-Jewish hate propaganda that the trial judge described as “vile and degrading” at sentencing.

“Harry Abrams and B’nai Brith have demonstrated great leadership in holding Arthur Topham accountable for his criminal hate propaganda attacking the Jewish community,” says lawyer and CAN Board Member Richard Warman.

Warman worked in cooperation with Abrams and B’nai Brith throughout the case and would like to thank the investigating police officers from the British Columbia integrated hate crimes team noting that “even Arthur Topham describes them as polite and professional – high praise from a criminal hatemonger you’re arresting.”

Len Rudner, another part of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network team, acted as an expert witness at Topham’s trial.