Can a Blogroll Be Defamatory?

An anonymous reader clues us that the wildly litigious Canadian Wayne Crookes, who has been suing the Internet for defamation, has added Michael Geist to his hit list. Geist is a well-known Canadian law professor and blogger. His offense: linking on his blog to site that links to another site that contains material allegedly of a defamatory nature. (Others would characterize that material as historical facts about Crooks's tenure at the helm of the Canadian Green Party.)

Comments

Well, it's Canada

[phorm]

One of the differences up here from the American system is that if (and I hope, when) Mr Crookes loses this case, then he can look forward to paying the costs of the defendants.

Usually that acts as a strong deterrent against frivolous lawsuits. I guess it doesn't always work, but it'll be nice to see the big fat bill forthcoming.

Awarding legal costs to the successful defendant

[billstewart]

Sometimes a US judge can do that too, without a lawsuit.

The disadvantage to loser-automatically-pays is that it's extremely risky for an injured individual to sue a large corporation, even if he's right, because the corporation can afford much better lawyers (and therefore has an unequally high chance of winning, even if they're wrong), and usually has much higher legal costs. So if you lose you're not just out your own legal costs and the court's costs, you're out the legal costs of the corporation that had injured you.