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| CanWest bullies local activists |
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| Cambie Street merchant's case adjourned |
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| Kyle Tait's death a homicide, jury rules |
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Canada's largest media congllomerate has sued a few local activists for allegedly producing a four-page parody criticizing The Vancouver Sun's apparent media biases.
We are the solicitors for Carel Moiseiwitsch in CanWest Mediaworks Publications Inc. v. Horizon Publications Ltd., Garth Leddy, Mordecai Briemberg, Gordon Murray, Carel Moiseiwitsch, John Doe #2, John Doe #3, Jane Doe #2 and Jane Doe #3; Supreme Court of British Columbia Action No. S078309, Vancouver Registry.
Church & Company are the solicitors for CanWest, which started the lawsuit on December 7, 2007, alleging in its Amended Statement of Claim that "each of the defendants, has been involved, directly or indirectly, in anti-Isrqaeli and pro-Palestinian media activities." We have responded, in part, with the following, at paragraph 10 of the Statement of Defence: "In answer to the whole of the Amended Statement of Claim, this Defendant says that the Plaintiff's action is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation intended to stifle or suppress the free expression of political opinion that is inconsistent with the Plaintiff's political and editorial agenda of promoting the State of Israel within Canada." No trial date has been set for the case.
For further information on this matter, please go to: www.seriouslyfreespeech.wordpress.com
The trial of a Cambie Street merchant's civil claim for compensatory damages resulting from Canada Line construction disruption has been adjourned to March 16, 2008. The BC Supreme Court trial, which was to have started in November, was rescheduled by Mr. Justice Pitfield.
The Plaintiff, Susan Heyes Inc. dba Hazel & Co., alleges that the Defendants Canada, BC, Vancouver, the GVTA, Canada Line Rapid Transit Co. Ltd. and InTransit BC is liable for misrepresentations, private nuisance and negligence. None of these allegations have been proven against the Defendants, who have admmitted no liability.
The two week long coroner's inquest into the death of Kyle Tait, 16, concluded yesterday with the jury determining that his shooting was a homicide, not an accident. Kyle Tait was one of five teenagers aged between 14 and 18 who were in a vehicle that was pursued into Burnaby by all ten New Westminster police officers (in seven police cruisers) on duty on Tuesday, August 23, 2005. The pursuit ended in a collision which damaged six vehicles in a residential neighborhood. The jury heard evidence from at least four civilian witnesses that the teens' vehicle was stalled and motionless when Cst. Todd Sweet fired three bullets into it, wounding the eighteen year old driver and killing Kyle instantly. No drugs, alcohol or weapons were found in the vehicle, which later turned out to have been stolen.
As it happened, Cst. Sweet was under criminal investigation at the time of the shooting as a result of kicking another car theft suspect in the head two months earlier while the suspect, Anthony White, was lying defenceless in handcuffs on the ground. The "cowardly attack" was witnessed by several other police officers, who were reportedly sickened by the assault. They reported it to their supervisors, who took no action. Apparently frustrated, they then wrote an anonymous letter dated July 2, 2005 to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner in which they described the brutal kicking incident and reportedly said, "[Sweet] has been getting away with this for two long and its time that something was done about it." This was apparently a reference to formal complaints lodged against Sweet by ten civilians between 1999 and 2005, all of which were investigated by Cst. Sweet's New Westminster colleagues and ultimately dismissed as "unsubstantiated".
After Cst. Sweet killed Kyle Tait, he declined an opportunity to explain what had happened. Instead, he went to Smart & Williams, the law firm of choice for police officers in trouble, which submitted brief written statements on their client's behalf over the next couple of months. The statements purported to justify the shooting by asserting facts that were contradicted by other witnesses and evidence.
Cst. Sweet, the President of the New Westminster Police Association since 2000, was charged in February, 2007 with assault causing bodily harm for the attack on White and later convicted. He remains on duty.
