Two sisters simply want to “get on with their lives” after winning $ 100,000 in a defamation lawsuit against a woman who redistributed a screenshot of a Snapchat video on social media that she claimed showed them mocking death. of George Floyd five days after his murder. by the Minneapolis police.
Justine Lavallee and Shania Lavallee, from the Ottawa area, each received $ 50,000 in damages last month from Superior Court Judge Marc Smith, who said in his ruling that defendant Solit Isak used “hurtful and inappropriate language” to describe to the sisters and that she was “Relentless in her campaign” to get them fired.
Smith ruled that the screenshot “did not establish the factual basis that was required” to prove Isak’s allegations that the Lavallees were “racist.”
Isak’s attorney, Cedric Nahum, said in an email that he disagrees with the court’s decision, in part because “whether something is racist or not is a matter of fact and not opinion.”
“People’s interpretations of an act as racist or not is subject to their own personal beliefs and prejudices,” he said.
It’s a “warning” about the dangers of social media, said Howard Winkler, who has practiced media and libel law for more than 35 years.
“What you do on the Internet can cause rapid and serious damage,” says Winkler. “And if you abuse, in a sense, the privilege of social networks, there will be consequences.”
The Lavelle sisters, who have openly argued that the video had no connection to the Floyd case and was taken out of context, lost their jobs, their mother’s home was vandalized, and their friends and family received death threats after Isak shared the story. screenshot and urged his followers. to identify the people in it, according to the court decision.
Once their identities were known, Isak and others pressured their employers to fire them.
“This case highlights the ability of social media to be a weapon with destructive effects,” said his lawyer Charles Daoust, who said the sentence vindicated “his reputation in court” after a particularly “traumatic” year.
“As members of the indigenous community, they have always been sensitive to situations of racism in our society,” Daoust wrote in an email. “However, the events of May 2020 were in no way related to racism. Now that the Court has ruled in their favor, Shania and Justine want to move on with their lives and leave this matter behind. “
The screenshot, from May 30, 2020, showed Justine playing fighting with Gilmour Driscoll-Maurice, her sister’s boyfriend. He was holding Justine’s hands behind his back and his knee was in the middle of her back. Shania shared the video with a group of friends on Snapchat.
One of Shania’s followers sent a screenshot of the video to Isak, who posted it on Instagram and Twitter, inviting his followers to help identify the people in the photo and “denouncing the actions of Justine, Shania and Gilmour, whom he did not know. , as a racist, ”according to the lawsuit.
Floyd was killed five days earlier when Minneapolis police officers arrested the 46-year-old man and pinned him face down to the ground after a convenience store operator called 911, claiming that Floyd had bought cigarettes with a bill. fake.
The lawsuit against Isak proceeded after Smith ruled that the plaintiffs had satisfied the basis of a defamation case, which includes proving that the statements are about them and that the comments have been released to a third party. Isak’s posts were viewed between 15,000 and 40,000 times, depending on the ruling.
Another element is that the comments must also “tend to lower the reputation of the complainant in the eyes of a reasonable person.”
Nahum, Isak’s attorney, disagreed that this case met that standard, arguing that any damage to the sisters’ reputations was due “nothing more than to the inappropriate and insensitive actions of the Plaintiffs.”
The “plaintiffs have maintained that their actions were criticized out of context,” Nahum said in his email to the Star. “This is where I disagree with them. I think everyone should understand that ‘the context’ in which one’s activities will be viewed is greater than one’s own isolated personal world view, ”he said of the screenshot.
However, the judge said Isak’s posts “are serious allegations of misconduct. One of the associates of your position, Justine and Shania, in the Ku Klux Klan. Solit’s statements have engendered feelings of hatred, contempt, aversion and hostility towards Justine and Shania. ”
“A reasonable person who reads Solit’s posts on social media will easily tend to downgrade Justine and Shania’s reputations,” Smith wrote in his opinion. “Each of Solit’s posts is brief, but taken as a whole, the reasonable person would think and conclude that Justine and Shania are racists.”
Defamation cases also have a number of defenses, including fair remarks and justification. However, they are different from criminal cases in that the responsibility lies with the defendant, and not with the prosecution, to show that what they said is true.
And to do that, there has to be some evidence that the comments, whether stated as fact or expressed as an opinion, are based on fact, according to two attorneys interviewed by The Star.
Nahum argued that Isak’s posts were a fair comment because “the defendant clearly establishes the factual basis that the plaintiff’s actions clearly resemble the brutal murder of George Floyd,” an argument that he claimed was supported by a subsequent apology. from Shania for posting the video.
In it, Shania said that she understood that “the video could be taken out of context given the current situation and now I see how insensitive it is.” But he went on to say that his sister and Driscoll-Maurice were “playing fight like always.”
Nahum argued that the apology, along with the subsequent layoffs, helped prove justification.
According to a letter from the Canadian Border Services Agency filed as part of the case, the agency fired Justine, stating that “Regardless of Ms. Lavallee’s intentions, a reasonable person would have recognized that posting such a video at this time it would demonstrate a serious lack of judgment. “
“She also announced her employment with CBSA on social media,” according to the letter. “As such, the matter had damaged the reputation of the CBSA to the point where his occasional employment with the CBSA was unsustainable.”
Shania’s employer, Boston Pizza, fired her saying in part that, regardless of her intent, “Ms. Lavallee’s activities on social media damaged Boston Pizza’s brand and reputation.”
The Star wrote about the incident after confirming that Shania was fired from her job.
The Ottawa Catholic District School Board rescinded her employment letter to Shania, stating that the video, “taken out of context, may have racial overtones.”
The board went on to say that the “inappropriate social media posts attributed to him are not consistent with our values as a Catholic School Board.”
But the judge ruled that Isak didn’t have enough to prove his case.
Two people who viewed the video said that the words “police brutality” were never said in the video, as Isak claimed. And two teachers handed Shania “brilliant letters of recommendation” in the defamation case.
“In this particular case, there were no underlying facts,” Winkler said, explaining the judge’s decision to the plaintiffs. “They were simply expressions or statements of fact without the underlying basis for the comment.
“To be entitled to express a comment, and the law provides … a wide range of permitted comments, you must, within the comment, provide the underlying facts that you can show to be true on which the based comment is based,” he said. Winkler. “Or the facts have to be so well known that it is not necessary to declare them.”
According to the ruling, the facts must be sufficient for “readers to be able to make a decision on the merits.”
Had the defendant been able to view the full video, or contacted the Lavallee sisters for comment, Winkler says that “any of these steps would have provided adequate context on which the comment could have been made (or perhaps I never would have) in the first place) and people could decide if the comment had merit. “
Both sisters alleged in the lawsuit that their “lives were ruined overnight due to Solit’s actions. Their reputations have been annihilated and they suffered deep humiliation and shame, as well as severe terror and anxiety. “
Winkler says that, anecdotally, these types of libel suits are on the rise.
“Social media and the Internet have opened a kind of massive and broad communication for everyone without the same checks and balances” as traditional media, Winkler said. “And great harm can be done because of it.”
Reference-www.thestar.com