Leaked sexts don’t justify firing: judge

After mysterious photos emerged online of former NHLer Mike Zigomanis’ penis, Toronto beverage entrepreneur Frank D’Angelo figured he was safe to fire the player from his job as spokesman for a new blueberry-flavoured edition of Cheetah Power Surge Energy Drink.

But in a winning decision for Internet privacy, Ontario’s Superior Court ruled this week that leaked sexting is no reason to give a drink promoter the axe.

“Private letters, poems, sketches, photographs and the like, containing intimate information, have been exchanged between individuals for centuries,” wrote Justice David Stinson. The judge then struck down D’Angelo’s claim that the hijacked penis images had violated a contractual requirement for Zigomanis not to ridicule “public morals and decency.”

The entrepreneur was ordered to pay Zigomanis the unpaid balance of his fouryear contract: $162,500.

In May 2011, D’Angelo hired Zigomanis as a two-year “brand ambassador” for a new blueberry-flavoured version of Cheetah Power Surge. Paid a rate of $50,000 a year, Zigomanis also had the option to unilaterally extend the contract to four years.

Soon, Toronto airwaves were filled with a ubiquitous Cheetah Power Surge commercial featuring both Zigomanis and fellow Maple Leaf Luca Caputi.

Then, in December of 2011, two nude photos of Zigomanis appeared on IsAnyoneUp.com, a revenge porn website. Zigomanis later confirmed he had sent them privately to a girlfriend in 2010.

In early 2012, Zigomanis received a concise termination letter noting that he had lost the “cache (sic) of a Toronto Maple Leaf NHL player,” as he was now with the Leafs’ farm team. It also cited his “nude photo scandal” that did not “shed any good light on the product.”

But Justice Stinson concluded it’s not Zigomanis’ fault that he had private images posted to a revenge porn site. In fact, he had been the victim of an act now considered a crime in Canada. Publishing “an intimate image of a person knowing that the person depicted in the image did not give their consent to that conduct” can now draw up to five years in jail.

Wrote Stinson: “I conclude that to send an intimate photograph to another consenting adult by electronic means would not be likely to shock, insult, or offend the community.”