CANADA
The Tyee
By Bob Mackin, Today, TheTyee.ca
The lawyer for reporter Laura Robinson conceded at the end of John Furlong’s B.C. Supreme Court defamation trial June 26 that the former Vancouver Olympics chief executive won the battle in the court of public opinion.
“He excels at the court of public opinion,” Bryan Baynham told Justice Catherine Wedge. “My client seeks justice in a court of law.”
The two-week trial was the product of Robinson’s countersuit filed in January 2014. Furlong claimed on several occasions that she was an activist with a vendetta and a poor journalist. Furlong was first to sue Robinson and the Georgia Straight for defamation in November 2012, two months after Robinson’s expose, headlined “John Furlong biography omits secret past in Burns Lake” was published. Robinson’s story accused Furlong of inconsistencies in his Patriot Hearts memoir and abuse against his First Nations gym class students at Immaculata elementary.
Furlong dropped his defamation lawsuits against the newspaper in October 2013 and against Robinson in March of this year after three sexual abuse lawsuits by people claiming to be former students never made it to trial.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.