TORONTO – Ontario’s top court has tossed a defamation action by a lawyer over a book in which he is cited as saying he identified with the Mexican bandit from the movie “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”
In a written ruling Monday, the Court of Appeal sided with a lower court judge, who rejected the action from David Midanik against Betsy Powell in October last year, and ordered him to pay more than $100,000 in legal costs.
“In our view, this defamation action was ill-conceived,” the Appeal Court said.
Source: metronews.ca
Two lessons from this Canadian case. First, consider whether your colorful writing style is going to get you into trouble, and second that context is everything.
In this case, a lawyer penned a book about some of his legal experiences. He wrote about a case he prosecuted against a Toronto street gang, and stated that one of the defense attorneys was like Tuco Ramirez, a character from the film “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” He paraphrased a line from the character, “I like big men because they fall hard.”
The defense lawyer in question took offense at this comment, and sued for defamation. He argued that by equating him with Tuco Ramirez, the author implied that he was a murderer, rapist, dishonest and sleazy.
The case was doomed to failure, both legally and conceptually.
When one quotes from a fictional character, that does not mean or even imply that the quote is meant to pull in all the traits of the character in question. If I’m doing a hockey story, and I show a player making a slap shot, with the caption, “Say hello to my little friend,” am I implying that the hockey player is a drug lord?
The trial court and Court of Appeal agreed with my interpretation, and dismissed the case. Under Canadian law, the loser pays, so this ill-conceived case (the court’s words) cost the thin-skinned attorney about 100,000 Canadian dollars, eh.
The post Court tosses lawyer’s libel suit over ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ appeared first on Internet Defamation Blog.