Newspaper wins appeal against defamation damages
The Province newspaper has won its appeal of an order that it pay former MP Blair Wilson $125,000 in damages for defamation. In August 2017, Justice Jane Dardi cleared the newspaper of most of the allegations of defamation levelled against it by Wilson in articles written by reporter Elaine O’Connor more than 10 years ago.
The judge found that the defence of responsible communication applied to much of the material that dealt with allegations of unpaid debts, improper campaign spending and unsuccessful business ventures involving Wilson.
But she concluded that the defence did not apply to an erroneous paragraph in an October 2007 story that alleged Wilson sought a loan from his mother-in-law on her deathbed, a so-called deathbed loan. The newspaper filed grounds of appeal, including that the judge had erred in failing to apply the defence of responsible communication to the article as a whole, rather than applying it separately to different themes within the story. In a ruling released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed the defamation claim.
Justice David Tysoe said in his reasons for judgment that the trial judge had erred by focusing on one aspect of the article and failing to consider it as a whole. Tysoe rejected a cross appeal that was made by Wilson and noted that ordinarily in those circumstances the appropriate order would be to call for a new trial.
“The assessment of whether the standard of responsible communication has been made out would normally involve findings of fact or, at a minimum, the weighing of evidence,” said the judge. “These are matters for the trial court. However, in the present case, it is my view that the findings of fact by the trial judge are adequate to enable this court to reach a conclusion as a matter of law.”
The appeal was upheld and the damages award set aside. The court found that the newspaper was entitled to their costs of the proceedings in the trial court and their costs of the appeal and cross appeal.
Justice Mary Saunders and Justice Harvey Groberman agreed with Tysoe’s reasons.
Wilson, a Liberal candidate who was elected as an MP in the riding of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky in 2006, launched the suit after several stories were written by O’Connor. The stories detailed how Wilson left a trail of debt his critics claimed had left him unfit to hold office given his pronouncements that he was fiscally responsible.
The deathbed claim related to a $22,870 transaction in April 2007, described in the article as a loan from Norma Lougheed, Wilson’s motherin-law, to Wilson just before her death the following month. In fact, the money was a repayment to Wilson of money he had loaned to his election campaign fund. When the newspaper discovered the truth in January 2011, it published a correction.