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JUSTICE DELAYED, BUT DONE by Doug Collins
Some strange things happen these days in our courts. But all is not yet lost, as can be seen from the judgment in the Pressler/Lethbridge/TV libel case. The verdicts against Lethbridge & Co. in the B.C. Supreme Court and in the Appeal Court showed that in spite of strenuous efforts to the contrary, the lunatic Left cannot yet attack the Right with impunity; nor can it threaten to drive their victims out of town and destroy their businesses. It should also be mentioned that the case was a major victory for lawyer Doug Christie, who handled it for the Presslers in both courts. David Lethbridge is a psychology professor at Okanagan University College who for years has waged a vicious vendetta against Mrs. Eileen Pressler and her husband, Claus. Mrs. Pressler ran the right-wing Council On Public Affairs, which put out a news letter and held meetings in Salmon Arm, her home town. Among others, talks were given by Eustace Mullins, the American right-winger and author, Ron Gostick of the Canadian League of Rights, and on one occasion even by my humble self and Pat Burns, the late broadcaster. He and I spoke on the threat to free speech represented by B.C.'s venomous human rights laws. Lethbridge, a communist, organized several demonstrations against the Presslers, using stupid students as his tools. A fanatic, he bullied hotels into not allowing Mrs. Pressler to hold meetings in them and in 1992 he phoned her to say: "Yeah. I got a message for you, you f***ing Nazi pigs. Any more of these goddam rallies and there's gonna be trouble. We're fed up with you, so just f*** off." The call had been recorded and was presented in court as evidence. At one event he "mooned" the Presslers, being apparently proud of his bare ass and proving that leftist academics can be cruder than skinheads. In 1993, inspired by Lethbridge's activities and press reports based on his drum-fire propaganda, the Okanagan's CHBC TV did a program claiming that sinister things were afoot on the Presslers' property. A large house they were having built, stated the television reporter, was rumored to be a fortified convention centre with a potential for paramilitary use, complete with underground bunkers, security fences, and special electronic equipment. Lethbridge was interviewed, and viewers could conclude from the program that the house was a sort of Waco compound or Nazi bunker designed for the use of "fascists" and other sub-humans. It was also alleged that in building the house, the Presslers had deceived the municipal building authorities. It seems she hadn't made it clear that she was building a fortress. The report was false from beginning to end, and Mrs. Pressler told the court it was "a nightmare that almost overnight destroyed our family in the community. We became outcasts and pariahs because of what appeared in print and on television". The story made a lot of news in B.C., and CBC Newsworld ran the story nationally (you bet!). It was so convincing, said Mrs. Pressler, that she was not sure she had persuaded her sister in Saskatchewan that it was totally untrue. Lethbridge, meanwhile, had made no secret of his intentions, which were not only to drive the Presslers out of town but also to destroy Mr. Pressler's pharmacy business, and the publicity contributed to its having to be sold. As this teacher of our youth told the Globe & Mail, "What has an effect is when the family breadwinner goes down the tubes...." The trial lasted 25 days, and the judge found against Lethbridge and the TV station. In doing so, he nevertheless took it upon himself to describe Mrs. Pressler as a racist and an anti-Semite, which, true or false, in my opinion had little to do with the libelous matter in hand. Still, he awarded Mr. Pressler damages of $50,000, while Mrs. Pressler got $11,500. Plus costs in both cases. Incredibly, in view of the undeniable evidence, the station and Lethbridge appealed, the former stating publicly that it "stood by its story". But, unanimously, the court dismissed the appeal. It also awarded the Presslers $15,000 punitive damages against Lethbridge that had not been awarded by the trial judge. Mr. Christie's plea that the story was "false, malicious and injurious under the pretext of news" was therefore upheld. "No-one has any right," said the three appeal judges, "to drive anyone, no matter what his views, out of town". The punitive damages, they declared, were "to warn off others ...who assert that they may take the law into their own hands. A lynch mob is still a lynch mob," they said, "even if the person lynched committed the crime." Madam Justice Mary Southin led the judgment, observing dryly that the TV program "was not in the highest traditions of responsible journalism". The reporter, one Blaine Gaffney, had been "blinded by Mrs. Pressler's opinions and thus was unable to grasp that what he was doing was wrong". In other words, he was a politically correct devotee of the idea that anyone accused of anti-Semitism, racism or of breaking taboos, deserves to be dragged through the dirt, bunkers or no bunkers. Typically, the outcome of this story has been ignored by
the mainstream media, but the full verdict is on the
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THE
COLLINS COLUMN, Wednesday, December 6, 2000
