NDP candidate guilty of defamation
CRANBROOK The NDP candidate in Columbia River-Revelstoke has been found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $75,000 in general and aggravated damages plus legal costs.
In a scathing decision released Thursday, Justice Gordon Weatherill ruled that Gerry Taft — who is also the current mayor of Invermere — maliciously defamed animal rights activist Devin Kazakoff with comments he posted on a news website called e-Know in January 2016.
The judge described Kazakoff as “honest and forthcoming” in his 51-page decision and had “no hesitation accepting his testimony in its entirety.” As for Taft, “I am unable to give the defendant’s evidence the same approbation.”
The judge called Taft’s evidence on non-controversial matters “straightforward and forthright.” But when it came to the central issues, the judge said Taft “became confrontational, argumentative and often launched into campaignstyle monologues in an effort to validate his actions.
“It was apparent that he viewed many of the questions put to him on cross-examination as an affront to his integrity.”
He rejected both Taft’s testimony about his motivation for writing the online comments about Kazakoff as “overly rehearsed and disingenuous” and his evidence that he was unaware of Kazakoff ’s sentence and conditional discharge. Twice during cross-examination, the judge noted that Taft said “many crimes in Canada don’t have a severe enough penalty.”
Following the publication of the defamatory remarks, Kazakoff demanded an apology from Taft. Taft’s lawyer, Brent Desruisseaux, argued that his client’s comments of free expression were based on a reasonable person’s understanding of legal terminology.
“He (Taft) intended to attack the plaintiff’s character and integrity and chose his words deliberately,” according to the judge.
Kazakoff pleaded guilty in 2014 to mischief for vandalizing and destroying deer traps set up as part of the district of Invermere’s deer cull program. He was fined and given a conditional discharge in August 2015, which meant he had no criminal record.
Despite that, Taft described Kazakoff as a “convicted felon” in the comments section of the website that had posted a press release about the cruelty of deer culls that had Kazakoff’s name listed as one of several contacts. The press release was introduced, and accepted by the judge as evidence of the defamation.
Taft, 35, was first elected as a district councillor 15 years ago and has been mayor of Invermere since 2008.