[Section 15] Crookes lawsuits are not dismissed

The news of Crookes' cuberlibel suits demise is, sadly, greatly exagerated.

It was recently announced that the BC Court of Appeal repeated the finding of a lower court and threw out part of one lawsuit. This eliminates Yahoo as a defendant, and affects several other defendants. It does not, however, end any of Crookes lawsuits as he is suing over a great many things.

The lawsuit in question, Crookes v. Holloway et. al., does involve me, and the ruling does help; however, the claim that a wiki I helped manage had a link to a link to a site he objects to remains. The principle defendant, Kate Holloway, is still in the case. She has launched a counter-suit against Andy Shadrack, a former Green Party of Canada councillor, political organizer, and federal GPC candidate.

All of the other lawsuits also remain, with the very important Crookes v. Openpolitics up for trial this Fall.

The defendants continue to need your help. Please donate using the PayPal button on the right sidebar.

What this partial dismissal is about

Crookes was claiming that Yahoo was responsible for the content of a private Yahoo group named GPC-Members. He was also claiming that all of the moderators were responsible for the content, even though content moderation was passive -- that is, posts were not approved before posting.

The judge did not rule on any of the above.

What she ruled was that Crookes had failed to prove that the alleged libel was ever published in BC. As easy as it is to bring forward a libel case in this country, plaintiffs are still obligate to satisfy the court beforehand that certain key criteria have been met, including the issue of whther or not the material was actually published in the jurisdiction in question.

As Crookes failed to present any evidence that anyone in BC viewed the private material, the entire claim involving the GPC-Members group was thrown out.

Crookes himself was not a member of the group, and only knew of its content from a third party, presumed to not be a resident of BC.

Crookes can appeal this to the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), however, it is not likely that the SCC would even hear the case. Most appeals to the SCC are denied a hearing.

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Posted By Mark Francis to Section 15 at 5/12/2008 11:35:00 AM