Appeal court upholds order against Galloway accuser

B.C.’s highest court has upheld an order for a woman to produce documents relevant to the case in which she has accused former University of B.C. professor Steven Galloway of sexual assault.

The woman, identified only by the initials A.B. due to a publication ban, was a student of Galloway, the head of UBC’s creative writing program, when allegations surfaced in November 2015.

The university stated at the time that serious allegations had been made against Galloway and that he had been suspended, resulting in an investigation by former B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen Boyd.

The former judge concluded that Galloway had had a consensual affair with A.B., but the university fired him in June 2016 due to an “irreparable breach of trust.” UBC later paid Galloway $167,000 in damages after an arbitrator found that certain communication by the university violated his privacy and damaged his reputation.

In October 2018, Galloway sued a number of people, including A.B., alleging that he’d been defamed by false allegations of rape, sexual assaults and physical assaults by A.B., and repeated by the other defendants on the internet.

In May 2019, A.B. and two other defendants applied to have the defamation suit dismissed under a new law aimed at protecting people from lawsuits brought to silence or punish a critic. Lawsuits brought under the law, known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suits, allow the parties to cross-examine each other over their affidavits.

After cross-examining the three defendants, lawyers for Galloway asked for documents including correspondence and emails between A.B. and a number of people involved in the case. When that request for documents was refused, Galloway went to court seeking an order for disclosure.

In August last year, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Catherine Murray granted the order for disclosure of the documents. A.B. appealed Murray’s order, but in a ruling released Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the B.C. Court of Appeal rejected that appeal.

Her lawyers argued that Murray had made a number of errors in her analysis and asked for the order to be set aside.

In his reasons for judgment, B.C. Court of Appeal Chief Justice Robert Bauman agreed that the judge had made some errors but dismissed the appeal, noting that the disclosure being sought was “measured in scope and justified on grounds of relevance.”