Professor wins $60,000 in defamation lawsuit against Ezra Levant

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An Edmonton judge has awarded a $60,000 judgment against Rebel Media founder Ezra Levant, finding he defamed a political science professor and former Liberal candidate during a 2014 Sun News broadcast.

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In a decision released Friday, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard found Levant failed to adequately justify his claim that Farhan Chak “shot up” an Edmonton nightclub when Chak was 19 years old.

She also expressed bafflement as to why Levant chose to mention Chak in his monologue at all.

“The real question is why the statements were included in the broadcast at all,” Leonard wrote. “This was a one-hour broadcast that dealt with human rights commissions. Mr. Levant admitted that Dr. Chak had nothing to do with human rights commissions but said Dr. Chak was used as a vignette.”

In 2007, Chak was the Liberal Party of Canada candidate in Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont under Stéphane Dion. He eventually withdrew his candidacy amid controversy.

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In a 2014 broadcast, Levant claimed that Chak stepped down after it emerged he had been charged with firing a shotgun at employees of Barry T’s nightclub in 1993. Chak, who was acquitted of the charges, denied this and said the party’s concerns related to his writings about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Now an associate professor at Qatar University, Chak claims the judge hearing the Barry T’s case concluded he had been a victim of mistaken identity.

Transcripts of the trial itself have not survived, however, leading Levant’s legal team to question whether Chak’s acquittal was in fact a full exoneration.

Levant made the offending remark on his Feb. 25, 2014, Sun News television show, The Source. His dealings with Chak go back to at least 2007, when, as a writer for the Western Standard, he reported on the 1993 charges and questioned whether Chak was a “nut with a gun.”

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Levant later wrote an article about Chak’s brother Arman Chak, a staff lawyer with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and repeated his comments about the brothers in his 2009 book on human rights commissions and freedom of speech.

The key issue in the defamation trial was whether, on a balance of probabilities, Farhan Chak was actually the nightclub shooter.

Levant argued that while his comments were defamatory, they were justified because they were “substantially” true . The defence called three witnesses from the 1993 proceedings — all former nightclub employees — who identified Chak as the shooter.

Leonard, however, noted that two of the witnesses failed to identify Chak at a preliminary inquiry, but did so confidently 30 years later. She concluded that their evidence was “insufficient to establish … that Dr. Chak was the shooter.”

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‘Does not amount to malice’

While Leonard found Levant had defamed Chak, she declined to award the full $200,000 sought in his lawsuit, finding the harm caused by Levant’s comments was not as great as Chak claimed.

Chak argued Levant’s targeting of him was motivated by malice, noting he made the remarks on three occasions, including after he was out of the country and no longer active in Canadian politics.

Leonard, however, concluded Levant’s remarks were merely careless.

“Mr. Levant acknowledged that he made a mistake and should have included a statement that Dr. Chak was acquitted of the charges,” she wrote. “He recalled relying on what he wrote in his book and admitted that he did not do any further checks. At the time he made the broadcast, he believed the words of the statements were true.

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“I agree that considered from this perspective, his conduct was careless and does not amount to malice.”

She also declined to find that Levant’s comments were motivated by Islamophobia, saying the evidence was “insufficient to conclude that Mr. Levant is targeting Dr. Chak because he is Muslim.”

And while she accepted that Chak suffered as a result of Levant’s comments, Leonard noted his standing had already taken a hit from the controversy over his candidacy. Even then, he has had considerable professional success in the years since the broadcast. “In fact, his status as a university professor and expert in his field has continued to grow.”

Leonard ultimately awarded Chak $40,000 in general damages and $20,000 in aggravated damages. Notably, she declined to award punitive damages, which are used to punish a defendant’s misconduct.

Sun News, Sun Media Corp. and Quebecor Media Inc. were also named as defendants in the suit. This newspaper’s parent company, Postmedia, bought Sun Media’s English language publications in 2015.

jwakefield@postmedia.com

twitter.com/jonnywakefield

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