Ex-prof ordered to pay $100,000
Rancourt failed in bid to halt libel lawsuit
Former University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt must pay about $100,000 in legal costs after his motion to halt a $1-million libel suit filed against him by another professor was dismissed.
In a decision dated Oct. 4, Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Smith ordered Rancourt to pay legal costs of $50,000 plus HST to Joanne St. Lewis, a University of Ottawa law professor.
St. Lewis sued Rancourt in 2011 after he referred to her as university president Allan Rock’s “house Negro” on his blog. Rancourt must also pay $2,000 in disbursements.
Smith also ordered Rancourt to pay the University of Ottawa $40,000 for legal costs plus HST as well as disbursements of $2,000.
St. Lewis, who is being represented by lawyer Richard Dearden — who often acts for the Citizen on libel matters — had sought costs of $79,566, while the university asked for $58,004. Rancourt argued that he should not have to pay more than $25,000 in total.
The cost award flows from Rancourt’s unsuccessful attempt to have St. Lewis’s lawsuit dismissed, arguing that the university’s decision to pay her legal costs was an abuse of process.
Rancourt, a former tenured physics professor who was fired by the university in 2009, argued that the decision to pay St. Lewis’s legal bills amounted to “champerty and maintenance.”
In law, maintenance is defined as the “officious intermeddling in the litigation of others for an improper purpose,” while champerty occurs when, in return for financial support, the parties agree to share any profits from the action.
Smith dismissed Rancourt’s champerty motion in March, concluding there was no evidence that the university agreed to fund St. Lewis’s libel action for improper motives or purposes.
Rancourt has appealed Smith’s March ruling to the Ontario Court of Appeal. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 8 in Toronto.
He has also challenged the university’s dismissal of him in 2009. Though a hearing into his grievance concluded in June, he is still awaiting the arbitrator’s decision.
Rancourt said Tuesday the costs decisions against him to date “represent a small fraction of the public money being spent by the University of Ottawa to pursue me.” The university’s cost submissions to the court for motions alone in St. Lewis’s action amount to $500,000, he said.
In his Oct. 4 decision on costs related to the champerty motion, Smith rejected virtually all the arguments made by Rancourt, who is representing himself.
Though Rancourt argued that the champerty proceedings were not complex and lawyers for St. Lewis and the university had spent an excessive amount of time preparing for the motion, Smith noted that Rancourt’s affidavit and motion record contained 1,362 pages.
“Rancourt’s conduct of filing very lengthy, extensive materials on many issues and contesting every aspect of this litigation has caused counsel responding to his motion to spend large amounts of legal time to research and respond to his many allegations,” Smith said.
He endorsed the university’s view that what should have been a relatively straightforward motion “took on a life of its own due to Rancourt’s conduct of the litigation, which has added immeasurably to the cost and time.”
Rancourt, who has not drawn a paycheque since he was fired in 2009, argued that his inability to pay should reduce the amount of costs awarded.
For many months, his website has urged supporters to donate to the “Denis Rancourt legal fund,” and Rancourt wrote on his blog in July 2012 that his financial savings would be exhausted within a month or so.
But Smith said he didn’t have enough evidence before him to determine Rancourt’s ability to pay legal costs and also didn’t know how successful his online solicitation of financial support has been.