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http://www.steynonline.com/6155/an-inspiring-day
An Inspiring Day by Mark Steyn March 9, 2014
(snip)
"Testifying" doesn't quite capture the indefatigable [Ezra] Levant in full flight Friday at Ontario Superior Court in downtown Toronto.
His evidence-in-chief was part soliloquy, part lecture and all theatre, as befits the man who begins his prime-time, five-days-a-week show on the Sun News Network with a monologue which, as he told Judge Wendy Matheson, once went on so long "we had to cancel the commercials" because it had morphed into a "rant" of an hour.
His examination by his lawyer, Iain MacKinnon, for the first several hours consisted of MacKinnon asking Levant a question — and, perhaps 10 or 15 minutes later, as Levant would pause at last, getting to ask another.
(snip)
By the end of the day, no one could doubt (a) that he sincerely believes what he said about Khurrum Awan, and (b) that there's more than enough supporting evidence out there to make it an entirely reasonable proposition.
My admiration for what Ezra did was tempered by the sad realization that it would have been impossible in a US courtroom, where opposing counsel would have been leaping up and down with lame-ass objections every twelve seconds designed to derail the defendant whenever he got up a head of steam. In Toronto, there was not a single objection to testimony until the fourth day of the trial. And, even on the exhibits, Justice Wendy Matheson's habit is to let it in unless opposing counsel mounts a very strong argument that there's a prejudice issue. (Madam Justice Matheson is in a different league from the lazy and unfocused Natalia Combs Greene in Washington.) At one point, the defendant even took a swipe at the plaintiff's counsel, Brian Shiller, noting that his practice is to target prominent conservative figures, including Mayor Rob Ford, and that, between various clients, he currently has "four or five suits against me - I can't remember exactly," conceded Ezra. "Mr Shiller can correct me on cross-examination." From counsel's table, the wily barrister gave a thin smile.
In Toronto, Ezra Levant is insisting on the right to be tried as Ezra Levant. Whether this works depends on how he holds up under cross-examination all day Monday. But, even if it doesn't, it will ensure that at least he'll be hanged as Ezra Levant.
As I said, what Ezra did is not possible south of the border. I don't believe I've commented directly on the oft-retailed line by m'learned friends around the tort end of the blogosphere that "Mark Steyn has a fool for a client". That's an old English joke, of course. Circa 18th century, I believe, when English life was very lightly lawyered. Whether it applies a quarter-millennium on in a sclerotic dungheap of a system that, as my old boss Conrad Black likes to point out, employs as many lawyers as the rest of the planet combined, who between them invoice ten per cent of GDP. If the lawyerization of American life needs to snort up its nose the entire GDP of Australia every year, then you're doing it wrong.
I am slightly surprised by the naivety of those who pedal the fool-for-a-client line. I don't want for lawyers: I have a corporate lawyer (because I have a small business), I have an intellectual property lawyer (because I have copyrights), and I have a personal lawyer. And that's just in America. I have longtime solicitors in other jurisdictions I've lived and worked in. I enjoy the company of lawyers, including my old friend from the Maclean's case, Julian Porter, QC, who testified in Ezra's trial on Thursday.
But my white-shoe lawyers in the Michael Mann suit charged half-a-million bucks for a year in which everything they filed on my behalf they lost. Or, rather, I lost. The last thing I heard from them, in late 2013, was a proposal with regards to billing rates for 2015. That doesn't suggest they were planning on reversing their losing streak any time soon. I fired them on Boxing Day, and, when shortly afterwards they filed a formal notice of withdrawal with the court, there were no fewer than five listed lawyers, one of whom I'd never even met.
[How many of the plaintiffs' lawyers--and there are a slough of them--have ever even met with their clients? Even once?]
So, when Popehat says Mark Steyn has a fool for a client, I would humbly suggest that for over a year those five lawyers had a fool for a client. I was like most foreigners around the world - all I knew about American "justice" was that it was ruinously expensive and that it took up years of your life. As someone who loves America, I carelessly assumed that there must be more to it than that, only to have every single cliche about the system resoundingly confirmed. Jarndyce vs Jarndyce is not a blackly comic exception but the basic organizing principle. The system needs to change, because the costs and sclerosis have profoundly damaged the absolute constitutional protections Americans supposedly enjoy.
That's to say, if it takes half-a-decade and a seven-figure sum to confirm that you had the right to post a 280-word blog post, then the First Amendment isn't worth tuppence.
[if it takes half a decade to find out that city and state officials can frame innocent people for a crime which never happened, and have immunity for doing the same, then a whole lot of the Amendments aren't worth tuppence, imho.]
The other thing my time at Ezra's trial reminded me was that (as the Pelletiers learned after their own lost year in Massachusetts) you always need an extra-judicial strategy.
(snip)
As I said in my speech to the Manning conference last weekend in Ottawa:
When I ran into trouble with the "human rights" commissions five years ago, I had lunch with an old friend in Montreal who said just stay quiet, keep your head down, it'll all blow over. If I'd taken his advice, I would have lost, Maclean's would have lost, Canada's media would have lost basic free press rights, and Canadian citizens would have lost basic free speech rights. And then I ran into Ezra Levant, who said no, you need to go nuclear. That's Ezra's advice for everything – parking ticket, slow line at Tim Hortons, whatever.
So we did go nuclear.
And Elmasry and the Canadian Islamic Congress couldn't withstand the publicity, any more than the "human rights" racket could. By the time the CIC lost in court in British Columbia, they had already lost in a far more profound sense. I wish I were in Madam Justice Matheson's courtroom rather than trapped on a roulette wheel of procedural sophistry in the District of Columbia. But I promise you this: by the time this is through, Michael Mann will have lost as profoundly as Elmasry did.
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Mar 12 2014, 06:54 PM
Post #2
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http://www.steynonline.com/6167/plaintiff-is-as-plaintiff-does
Plaintiff Is As Plaintiff Does by Mark Steyn • Mar 13, 2014
(snip)
The defamation trial of my friend Ezra Levant in Toronto has now adjourned until closing arguments on April 7th. Ezra has returned to the telly after a week-and-a-half in the dock, and resumed his Sun News show with this characteristically pungent summary of the case.
You'll forgive a mirthless titter from me at his complaints about the $30,000 pre-trial lawyer's bill. As I noted the other day, my guys in the Michael E Mann suit burned through half-a-million and were anxious to negotiate billing rates for 2015 - which, presumably, they foresaw as still part of the "pre-trial" phase. Thirty grand with DC lawyers is barely a down payment on a preliminary phone call. What I wouldn't give for Canadian rates.
[I sure hope the lax plaintiffs aren't paying anything to their big-name attorneys, and that everything is on a percentage-of-the-take basis.]
(snip)
The great strength of Common Law, and the reason it has enabled more people to live in liberty than any other legal system in history, is that the "minority group" it prioritizes is the individual, equal before the law.
[That means that the individual has rights, before the group. And that he counts as an individual, and his rights pertain to him, personally (in his person), and not to any group. Too bad that same tradition doesn't apply in the Fourth Circuit, where rights are assigned or denied by group identity (a commodity which not everyone will even concede exists).]
Canada's "human rights" regime perverts that and accords you more or fewer rights according to which identity-group boxes you check, creating a system in which plaintiff and defendant are unequal before the law.
[See above.]
Christie knows this very well from her splendid coverage of the Caledonia fiasco, and her own reception at Elmasry's University of Waterloo. It's not "kind" to compromise with such a system; all it does is make you an accomplice of injustice - and, indeed, evil.
(snip)
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