{"id":4794,"date":"2013-12-04T13:20:15","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T18:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=4794"},"modified":"2013-12-11T13:23:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T18:23:51","slug":"bucks-election-results-refute-damages-claim-says-lawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/bucks-election-results-refute-damages-claim-says-lawyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Buck\u2019s election results refute \u201cdamages\u201d claim, says lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

After more than two weeks dedicated to Councillor Evelyn Buck\u2019s side of things in her ongoing trial against former mayor Phyllis Morris, Councillors Wendy Gaertner and John Gallo, and former Councillors Stephen Granger, Evelina MacEachern, and Al Wilson, week three concluded with the defence making their case.<\/p>\n

Lawyer David Boghosian began laying the groundwork Wednesday, rejecting Councillor Buck\u2019s claim a 2009 statement by Ms. Morris and the named councillors published in two local papers damaged her reputation. <\/p>\n

The statement stemmed from a raucous Council meeting in May 2009 in which then local volunteer Sher St. Kitts made allegations of harassment against Councillor Buck during an open forum session. Subsequent blog postings from Councillor Buck, were deemed to be critical to municipal staff and the statement, the defence argues, was intended to support those scrutinized in the blog.<\/p>\n

Councillor Buck claims damages of $1 million \u201cfor misfeasance in public office and abuse of power, conspiracy, intentional infliction of mental suffering, injurious falsehood, breach of confidence and breach of privacy\u201d with a further $1 million for \u201cinfringement or breach [of her] Charter Rights of Freedoms,\u201d a further $1 million in punitive damages, and $250,000 in aggravated damages.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften in a case like this when their reputation is alleged to have been damaged [a person] comes to court saying they have lost their job, they have been shunned by their community [and] if they are a politician, that they have been kicked out of public office,\u201d said Mr. Boghosian. \u201cThis is a very different case in that Ms. Buck hasn\u2019t suffered any damages or losses. <\/p>\n

\u201cMost significantly, not only wasn\u2019t she kicked out of public office, she actually got more votes after the events at issue than she had in the previous election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Boghosian argued this is a case about a Councillor wanting to preserve her \u201clegacy\u201d, her own sense of a \u201crecord\u201d in Aurora\u2019s public life, but suggested there was \u201ceven more to the lawsuit than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Going back to the events that started it all, he claimed that \u201clashing out\u201d on her blog at Ms. St. Kitts when she came to the podium, Ms. Morris, or any of the councillors in question would have been \u201cfair game\u201d but Councillor Buck took things a \u201cstep too far\u201d when she \u201cfocused her anger and her venting at defenceless staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the real meat of the case is the blogs that stemmed from this, he continued, alleging Councillor Buck accused town staff of, among other things, conspiracy and breach of trust. All serious allegations, he said, against staff who are \u201cnot in a position to respond in kind in a public forum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am going to ask you to conclude at the end of the day that my clients\u2019 decisions and actions were based on a genuine desire to protect and support staff and to ensure [these] kids of attacks on staff did not happen in the future,\u201d Mr. Boghosian told the jury of four men and two women. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy clients were concerned about the blog posts and the staff that were named were concerned as well. Rather than taking immediate action on their own, they did the prudent thing. They did the thing Ms. Buck herself has blogged was the prudent thing to do and that was consult legal advice to make sure you are on firm ground for launching a Code of Conduct complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Boghosian said the Councillors hired a \u201cspecialist in municipal law\u201d in John Mascarin, who was his first witness as the trial progressed last week, to see if Ms. Buck contravened the Code of Conduct. He found against Councillor Buck and recommended an \u201cinformal complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arguing that this could have been avoided had Councillor Buck simply apologised or issued a retraction, she refused to do so and then tried to \u201cdeflect criticism\u201d by claiming her free speech was under attack and she was being \u201cmuzzled\u201d as a critic of the administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach and every action that was taken was based on the desire to protect and support staff,\u201d said Mr. Boghosian in his defence. \u201cThere was no effort to stop her from criticising Councillors or to complain about policies of the Town. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe say our clients publically published that statement as a matter of public interest based on legal advice. We say that my clients acted in good faith for the sole purpose of protecting and supporting Town Staff and to stop further attacks on staff from happening in the future and not in any way to injure or muzzle Ms. Buck as she has been trying to claim to deflect criticism from herself. <\/p>\n

The claims have not been proven in court. The case continues this week. <\/p>\n

Lawyers on both sides told the court they hoped to wrap the case by this Friday.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After more than two weeks dedicated to Councillor Evelyn Buck\u2019s side of things in her ongoing trial, week three concluded with the defence making their case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1fk","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 15:39:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}