Judge awards teacher $67K over defamation

A teacher has been awarded $67,500 in damages after comments were posted on the Facebook page of one of his Abbots-ford-area neighbours that suggested he was a pedophile.

For several years before the Facebook posts in 2014, there had been tensions between Douglas James Pritchard, a middle school music teacher, and his neighbour Katherine Anne Van Nes.

In the posts, Pritchard was falsely accused of using a system of cameras and mirrors to keep Van Nes’s backyard and her children under 24-hour surveillance and called various names, including a “pedo,” a “nutter,” a “peeper” and a “creep.”

Van Nes, who had 2,000 friends on Facebook, had her privacy settings set to “public,” allowing her posts to be viewed not only by her friends, but by all users of the social media site.

Many comments made by Van Nes’s friends contained explicit denunciations of Pritchard’s alleged behaviour and the posts made by the defendant and by others, in their natural meaning and by innuendo, bore the meaning that Pritchard was a pedophile, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Saunders said in a ruling posted online Thursday.

Van Nes’s initial post to her Facebook page was copied by one of her friends and forwarded to the school where Pritchard, 52, worked.

“I will say at the outset that the defendant’s allegations concerning Mr. Pritchard’s behaviour and these attacks on his character were completely false and unjustified,” said the judge. “Mr. Pritchard has, as a consequence of the defendant’s thoughtless, reckless actions, suffered serious damage to his reputation and for the reasons set out herein he is entitled to a substantial award of damages.”

Court heard that in 2008, Pritchard, his wife and two sons had moved in next door to Van Nes and her family in Auguston, a subdivision of Abbotsford.

Tensions between them gave rise to allegations Van Nes was using her property in a manner so as to constitute a nuisance, interfering with the plaintiff’s enjoyment of his property.

A major source of tension was Van Nes had a large fish pond with a waterfall that Pritchard claimed caused constant noise night and day, disrupting his family’s sleep. After complaints were made, relations deteriorated.

The judge awarded Pritchard $2,500 in damages for nuisance, $50,000 for defamation and $15,000 for punitive damages. He also ordered a permanent injunction against the Van Nes family from operating the waterfall between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.