Sun News host Ezra Levant has been ordered to pay $80,000 in damages for libeling a Saskatchewan lawyer, according to a Superior Court decision released Thursday evening.
Ezra Levant, shown in Ottawa in 2010, has been ordered by a judge to pay $80,000 in damages for libeling a Saskatchewan lawyer.
By Manisha Krishnan
November 27, 2014
Sun News Network host Ezra Levant has been ordered to pay $80,000 in damages for libeling a Saskatchewan lawyer in a series of “reckless” blog posts, according to a Superior Court decision released Thursday evening.
“I find the defendant’s dominant motive in these blog posts was ill-will and that his repeated failure to take even basic steps to check his facts showed a reckless disregard for the truth,” wrote Justice Wendy Matheson in her ruling, which also called for Levant to remove the offending posts from his website within 15 days.
Levant told the Star he plans to appeal the judgment.
Khurrum Awan, a Regina-based commercial litigation lawyer, launched the $100,000 suit in response to nine blogs in which Levant labeled him a liar, anti-Semitic and a jihadist during and after a 2008 B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing. He alleged the posts hindered his ability to find a job.
A student at Osgoode Hall Law School at the time, Awan testified at the hearing over concerns about a Maclean’s magazine article he considered to be Islamophobic.
Levant’s posts, mostly headlined a variation of “Awan, the liar,” were critical of Awan’s association with the Canadian Islamic Congress and its founder Mohamed Elmasry, whom Levant characterized “anti-Semite-in-chief.”
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It’s not “libel” if it’s the truth, though. Khurrum Awan adheres to Islam, which is anti-Semitic (as well as anti-Christian and anti-everything else that’s not Islamic) by nature and allows and encourages lying (AKA “taqqiya”) and jihad.