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Is a private website open to legal action? It would seem so. What do you think? Should a private website have to adhere to journalistic standards?

Friday » January 13 » 2006

Judge slams activist Courtenay mom over e-mails
Teachers, others attacked in Internet campaign, awarded $700,000 in damages

Jeff Rud
Times Colonist


Friday, January 13, 2006


A Courtenay woman whose campaign of highly critical e-mails and Internet postings defamed nine teachers, a former school trustee and a parent, has been ordered by the B.C. Supreme Court to pay nearly $700,000 in damages.

Madame Justice Jacqueline Dorgan ordered Sue Halstead to pay 11 plaintiffs a total of $676,000 after Halstead published defamatory statements "in the context of a prolonged and sustained campaign of character assassination against each of the plaintiffs.''

The judge acknowledged that it will be difficult to collect the damages, given Halstead's financial circumstances, but also ordered her to stop publishing comments about the plaintiffs on the Internet or any other medium.

"Her conduct was clearly motivated by malice and was oppressive. Ms. Halstead's shockingly vicious attack upon, and her manifestly fictitious account of, each of the plaintiffs' character and conduct is deserving of rebuke ...,'' Dorgan wrote in her reasons for judgment.

Halstead, a mother whose five children attended public school in the Comox Valley, has a long history as a volunteer activist with a focus on education and prevention of bullying. But the judge ruled that she defamed these educators by sending out mass e-mails and postings in chatrooms in which she "regularly made allegations of teachers' misconduct and allegations that the school board mishandled or covered up the behaviours she referred to."

Halstead also created a website in 2003 that included a page entitled "B.C.'s Least Wanted" which the judgment described as a "rogue's gallery." It included a display of names and photographs of people whom Halstead contended had "engaged in wrongful conduct within the education system.''

The "Least Wanted" page was divided into sections, including those who had been disciplined by the B.C. College of Teachers; "Educators in Court," which included names and photos of teachers involved in litigation; "Bully Educators," whom Halstead alleged to have committed "acts deserving of rebuke, or deserving of the description 'bully;'" and "School Board Bullies," a number of boards alleged to have used bullying tactics against parents and students.

In cases where photos of teachers were not posted, cartoons of an apple with a worm in it were displayed in their place.

Edmund Newman, a teacher at Cumberland Junior Secondary, was awarded the greatest individual damages, getting $150,000. Other individual awards ranged from $1,000 to $125,000 and the judge also ordered $50,000 in punitive damages to be split among the plaintiffs, nine of whom live on Vancouver Island and two in Prince George.

Halstead released a brief statement by e-mail Thursday in response to the judgment.

"The judge has ordered me not to discuss these issues and I can't or I would be in contempt of court,'' she wrote. "I took these [defamatory] statements off the website in November 2003 when the union demanded that I do so. That is over two years ago. I have no intention of ever publishing them again.''

jrud@island.net

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2006








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I always ask myself how something can be misused rather than used. Clearly she misused the power of the Internet to slander teachers. It is very difficult to counter lies like that. Any laws that can stop her lies can also be misused to shut journalists and whistleblowers up too.

ToshoftheWuffingas wrote:

I always ask myself how something can be misused rather than used. Clearly she misused the power of the Internet to slander teachers. It is very difficult to counter lies like that. Any laws that can stop her lies can also be misused to shut journalists and whistleblowers up too.

That is the point that is being argued. I read an opinion piece about this somewhere else, but sadly I can't find it.

I don't think there is much danger of journalists being shut up as this nutbar was, though. She had nothing on her side but her folly.

If a journalist reports the truth, no matter how vile, then according to the law of the United States, truth is a defense.

What the nutbag did was post lies. Journalists need not be concerned.

Private websites are still public publications, and thus can hold the person responsible to libel charges if the statements meet the standard of libel.

journalistic standards - what an innovative concept-