Mom Makes Website, Gets Sued for $2 Million

An anonymous reader writes "A Canadian stay-at-home mom of 3 recently created a website to report on environmental problems around her neighborhood. The general public and governmental workers lauded her for her efforts. The environmental Ministry spokesman was even quoted as saying 'Obviously we can't have staff everywhere all the time, so we depend on the public out there as surrogate eyes and ears for the ministry'. However, not everyone was quite as happy, as she soon found out, when one company decided to sue her for libel to the tune of $2 million."

Comments

heh

[Renraku]

Bad: Woman rights remarks about your company.

Worse: Sue said woman for more than she can ever possibly make under normal circumstances, breaking her family apart and probably separating her three kids.

They could have made it 'better' by being like "We're glad you brought this to our attention and we're going to fix it. Thanks for your vigilence!"

Is the big company a bully?

[ThatGeek]

My first reaction is that the company is scum. It tries to bury the truth instead of dealing with it. But it is essential to know whether or not her claims are in fact false before questioning the validity of the suit. After all, I can't just say something bad about a company that does bad things.

Then again, you would think the firm would go out of its way to disprove her allegations. It doesn't seem to even try. At trial, the firm would likely need to show her statements as false. If she's telling the truth, I bet the firm will crumble. Rather that having all of their dirt come out in open court, they'll use a last minute excuse like "We felt bad for her kids, so we are letting her outrageous claims go... this time."

I can't wait to see how this turns out.

Reports from the local newspaper, the K-W Record

[davecb]

Quoted at an activist site, Rabble. See http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get _topic&f=5&t=001759

--dave (who went to university in KW) c-b

Eh

[Reality Master 101]

It's hard to tell from the article, but there's often two sides to these stories.

Case in point: I have a neighbor. He's an old man with a bad attitude who is basically a crank. He also walks around the neighborhood look for "issues" and is a total PITA if you get on his bad side. A few years ago, my boy (who was about 3-4 years old at the time) was obssessed with hoses, drains and pipes. He LOVED to put together sprinkler systems using PVC in my back yard. Of course, I encouraged him in his hobby, even though my water bill wasn't exactly pleasant news.

Well, the water running down the street just drove my neighbor insane. He tried to convince the neighborhood that the water was going to degrade the street. When that didn't work, he actually reported me to the Environmental Protection Agency (who sent out a very nice woman, who was very impressed with my son's sprinkler systems when I happily showed her around).

And I wasn't the only one -- at various times, he has had run-ins with the neighbors over phantom problems. The guy lives to find issues that don't exist.

So you'll pardon me if I don't necessarily believe this woman isn't a total wack-job without more evidence beyond this article.

Here's her site

[Junky191]

Seems to be offline but here's the google cache link if you're interested: http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:zQLM8Fs0lo8J:c a.geocities.com/infringements%40rogers.com/+Louise tte+Lanteigne&hl=en&client=firefox-a

She has a lot to lose

[AutopsyReport]

I'd like to think she is telling the truth, but I've known many types that will complain about anything. However, I've been around enough construction sites to know that the professionalism can be very sloppy and can induce the sort of incidents she described. This happens everyday.

Now, the problem I have is that even if she drops the website and the company continues to pursue the lawsuit, she has so much to lose. She's risking the well-being of her three kids to battle a libel case, one which she (presumably) has no funds to support. I'm not suggesting its wrong to take a stand, but I know first-hand what it is like to battle a corporation when you are being sued. My best friend was sued $150,000 by a company (he had an accidental fire in the house he was renting) and lost everything. The company never got a dime from him, but he was forced into bankruptcy, fell behind on all his bills, and to this day is still being tracked by companies trying to collect for unpaid bills. He lost to the one with financial superiority, and this really threw his life off course -- all over an accidental fire. Now he can't get a mortgage, credit cards, or much else.

If I was in this woman's position, I'd value the well-being of my kids over battling a corporation, because odds are she will not walk away from this in a better position than she was before this lawsuit started.

Hooray for loser-pays

[Kohath]

This case shows the merit of the loser pays rule.

It's the only way civil court proceedings can be made even remotely fair -- instead of the extortion/lottery they are in the US right now.

just planned a "save the earth" site :(

[dindi]

My wife and me, her being a conservation biologist, me just your regular treehugger, were planning on making a site here ins Costa Rica, based on photos we would take riding around the country, me on my bike, her on her quad (both silenced, small bore, so don;t flame about exhaust fumes and saving the earth ....

There are a bunch of local and foreign companies making serious damage, and we want to give it some exposure, besides riding around on our vehicles ....

quite honestly that news piece made us think about how many companies would want to sue our asses if we get noticed .... so not we are re-thinking our strategy ...

Our plan was to sneak around various industrial installations with a GPS and a digicam, and then post it blog-style with the help of goolge maps api ........ but now we are really reconsidering ....

Would YOU have the balls?

Counter sue on financial grounds

[theolein]

The lady should counter sue the company for attempting to drive her into bankruptcy. She should sue for percentually as much, based on the company's income, as the company is suing her, i.e. if her yearly income is $60'000 and she get's sued for $2million, then if the company's yearly income is $10million then she should sue for $400million. She should plainly state that she is counter suing because the company is maliciously attempting to drive her into bankruptcy with an amount that she could never pay instead of just suing to get her to close down the website.

She might not win, but it would provide precedence for annyone who is harrassed by giant companies in the future. (Hallo RIAA, did you hear that?) IT sure would be good to see some of those corporations think twice before abusing their power in future.

Re:I thought...

[dakotamangus]

...there's just enough information to make me think something else is going on here, but not enough to know what.

Based on her website, I think we might be able to take educated guesses at two of the mysteries:

1) What else is going on:

From her site: "Right now the Vista Hills land is up for rezoning. Ironically, this subdivision is already featured in an area phone book and it was on a free commercial map that was distributed to area homes. Even real estate guides have featured the completed Vista Hills subdivision on their maps for four years. The truth is the land is still agricultural. If the rezoning to residential takes place before the moraine is protected this subdivision will be built.

I ask both the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Labour to please step in and see what you can do in regards to protecting our groundwater from Activa. We know their history. The citizens of Waterloo Region simply cannot afford the risk. "

Public perception does not equate to much bottom line for a contractor; government rezoning does. It sounds like she was starting to have some success with the various ministries.

2) What their case is based on:

From her site: " Allow me to clairify once again, this website is designed to facilitate the reporting of labour and environmental law infringements to municipal, provincial and federal officials and to try to educate the public on the subject of safety so they can also make their own reports if necessary. In order to place the reports and to illustrate the existing situations I have to mention where I saw the infringements and what companies are involved. It's that simple."

Reporting on what she has seen is one thing. Charging specific companies with breaking the law is another. If the site simply reported oil spills and unsafe workers it would be one thing. Publishing beliefs about the legalities of the contractor's actions puts on record very specific and disprovable claims.

Regardless she is obviously well intentioned. I hope she gets some help in this.

At least this one is under Cdn Law

[redelm]

Well, well. Somebody's knickers got in a twist. And they decided to sue. Of course they can do that, but at their peril.

Cdn law is different from US law in a number of important instiutional details. The judge can and will award costs. Even if the company is technically correct, it could still wind up paying the defense costs. Automagically if the defendant pays a nominal sum "into court" and the award is less than this.

photograph everything

[justins]

Let this be a lesson. In the days of cheap digital cameras, if you're going to take on a task like this woman did, you might as well photograph every last thing and notate when the pictures were taken, and under what circumstances.

If that became a common practice, it's easy to imagine the bigger engineering companies collaborating with our elected officials to create laws and ordinances against "photographing at a construction site" or some shit. Something unconstitutional but meant to up the ante a litle bit for anyone who wants to take this task on.

In the mean time, give 'em hell.

Re:I thought...

[rtb61]

Actually all the company has to do is extend the court case beyond the ladies ability to financially sustain the fight in court and she looses. How ever via the internet the amount of damage the company suffers in the interim and the ability of the lady to access aditional financing and information has grown exponentially, so that she can continue the fight and counter sue i.e. in making the claim of libel against her they are committing a possible act of libel and are subject to counter suit, they are impugning her character in that she would make malicous and libelous statements.

Knowing builders and developers like I do, I can say with out fear of contradiction that they all infringe to some extent in some fashion or othe,r some of the enviromental or safety laws. She just has to prove this, it will be pretty easy to do if all she will need is a little bit of support from knowledgeable people from the industry i.e. competitors, subcontractors with an axe to grind, ex-employees, disgruntled customers etc. (I think they needed their collective heads read for starting something that is pretty well gauranteed to blow up in their collective faces).