OPINION: Cyber whatever the Rawdon Muni scandal

OPINION: Cyber whatever the Rawdon Muni scandal 
So let's review.. it's now march 10th 2012 49 months after the mise-en-demeur of jan29 2008 .. she won, and then lost, we won and were offered mediation feb10 2012


the Participants
BERVERLY PRUD'HOMME  (500-09-019906-098)
et
RICHARD PRUD'HOMME  (500-09-019909-092)
et
DANIELLE DELBECQUE  (500-09-019914-092)
LISE LEBEL
ROGER BEAUSOLEIL
et
STEPHEN LEBLANC alias STEVE SOLO  (500-09-019915-099)
APPELANTS – défendeurs-intimés
c.

MUNICIPALITÉ DE RAWDON
LOUISE MAJOR
JEAN LACROIX
INTIMÉS – demandeurs-requérants
et
THE GAZETTE, division de Canwest Publishing inc.
LA PRESSE LTÉE
ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE DES LIBERTÉS CIVILES
INTERVENANTS


So now it's finally time to tell my side of the story.. I believe the citizens of Rawdon deserve more anecdotes for their 1000000$ donation to the Major cause. 


Let's take the wayback machine and go back 8 years to 2004 ... that's when the Rawdon Forum began it's first blog.. this is when the Major clan first noticed our presence.. SQ captain Major visited me in civies asked me not to talk about the his mairess politics on the internet, these early blogs and photos were done on the public server like geocities.com.


On May5 2005 under the name Steve Solo, I opened an account and registered the domain name rawdon-qc.net (1) with the Toronto server  Inverdigm inc. (which quickly changed their raison d'etre to HostMDS after being subpoenaed by Dunton Rainville) *see how easy it is for a corporation to option out of the spotight the exact opposite was afforded to me*


According to the legal notes/profile which started in 2008 the court went after Steve Solo .. because he was in the phonebook.. Dunton Rainville's Me Carl Éric Therrien & Me Anne-Marie Coutu presented a theory of complicity to judge Guibeau and they sent the bailiff 2 techs and 2 police cars to my house in anton pilar style raid. 


Their immediate knocks to the door disrupted a romantic tete a tete, upset my dogs, and put me in a foul mood for nearly four years. I was paraded into court in February 2008 and every six months after for an update on the investigation  that really wasn't going anywhere.(2)


I was advised to hire a public defender because I have no money and was forced to go on welfare to prove it and forced to merge the 2 accounts Steve Solo & Stephen LeBlanc so the the focus was on my given name as on the official texts. Here again I lucked in fact being that if I had paid my own lawyer I could have continued with the alias .. this is just one big point that helped my case in the beginning.. I'll tell you why suppose I registered a name as copyright and applied for corporation status .. I didn't, but that's a moot point . The public record showed differently being that Solo registerd the www.rawdon-qc.net domain. Based on that  point they were after a coporation not an individual. As a corporation I could deduct costs of a good lawyer but as an individual I could obtain minimum representation .. were they surprised when I waltzed into AideJuradique claiming to be Steve Solo.
http://www.canlii.org/fr/qc/qccs/doc/2008/2008qccs4573/2008qccs4573.html [12] 


The judge ruled that I wasn't allowed to further my investigation into the secret dealings at muniVille telling me that under no circumstances should I repeat any Major event concerning Rawdon, under threat of comtempt of court.. 9 juillet 2009 par la Cour supérieure, district de Joliette (l'honorable Danielle Richer) I had already closed down the internet forum so what did they want? 


Rawdon is a town of a modest 10,000 residents: how could it run up legal bills in the amount of $541,675.25 (as of Dec. 31, 2009)? That is just over $54 for every man, woman and child living in Rawdon


Well the MajorMunis wanted damages from me for being the ring leader of their so called case for diffamation of $360000. Well that was pretty scary stuff they were talking real money.. that sent me to the doctor for some happy pills.. like the mairess I was depressed.. not only that. I was blacklisted in Rawdon I couldn't even get job singing in the local bars as one of the council yesmen was a barowner. In order to gain any employment I had to travel out of the Rawdon area. 


On a few Sunny afternoons I enjoyed performing on the terrace of the Cafe des Artistes within view of the Mairess's office on Queen St. made tips of $25 an hour and had a good time watching people dance to my beat.. later the Cafe's lease was not renewed.  


CAGE has since noted that following the initiation of the Rawdon test case, another case was fashioned in the image of the Rawdon test case model. In December 2008, a majority of the municipal council of Beauceville authorized funding to sue a local media outlet for alleged defamation of the municipal government and its mayor. The text of the Beauceville Resolution actually states that it seeks to have the law firm (Dunton Rainville) that represented Rawdon in case number 705-17-002451-084 “do for Beauceville what they did for Rawdon.”


The name Steve Solo was used repeatedly in the Joliette newspaper L'Action, adding to the confusion in Rawdon and later using my legal name added more hurt to an already difficult situation. Not only did the local newspaper devote one sided editorials to the matter but also le Devoir and other majors in both languages. These were hard times .. for me my friends. 


Before my legal aide Lawyer David Couturier quit to take an offer with Dunton Rainville (dcouturier@duntonrainville.com) he made a gesture of kindness because he liked me as a person I guess (hisWords). He filed a suit for damages against the Municpality of Rawdon and Major and Lacroix for $720,000 in my name and gave me the name of another lawyer from Montreal Kimon Kling.


 So there I was with no legal representation, and public figures after my ass.. In order not to be consumed by these events I chose to layback and observe the others .. 


Beverly Prudhomme and her son Richard Pudhomme filed an apeal with higher court of appeals Under the advice of Kimon Kling, I sought and was underwitten by my lawyer for the cost of the request. source  http://www.canlii.org/fr/qc/qcca/doc/2009/2009qcca2409/2009qcca2409.html


On March 26, 2010, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a broadly-worded blanket interlocutory injunction which had been issued against several Internet bloggers who had been involved in posting comments on an Internet forum, rawdon-qc.net. The interlocutory injunction, which had been issued on July 9, 2009 by Justice Danielle Richer of the Quebec Superior Court, had sought to altogether prohibit the Internet bloggers from somehow defaming the Government of Rawdon, its mayor, or director general in any way under threat of contempt of court proceedings.(3) http://www.thesuburbannews.ca/content/en/3697


In quashing the interlocutory injunction issued by Justice Richer, the Quebec Court of Appeal noted that the rawdon-qc.net blog, which had been established in 2005, contained some 240 webpages of various comments and that, at most, some 22 comments may have constituted commentary that may be highly objectionable and possibly defamatory, and that Judge Richer had failed by attempting to somehow prohibit any and all defamation at large by the bloggers as against the municipal government and its officials (which is tantamount to censorship).


There are over 1,100 municipalities in the province of Quebec. Allowing any one of them to sue for alleged defamation of the municipal government with taxpayer dollars, would give a wide open door for oppression of political opponents in no uncertain terms. One need only be reminded of the infamous Padlock Law in Quebec, which was originally designed to address communist propaganda, but later became a powerful tool for the more generalized oppression of political opponents and minorities in Quebec.


Quebecers should pay close attention to this case, especially any citizens who post critical comments about municipal governments on the Internet. If the Rawdon government defamation case does not meet the definition of a SLAPP, a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, what does? One would hope that Quebec courts would be able to see it the way the average citizen of Quebec sees it, and balance the playing field for persons having to defend this kind of lawsuit pursuant to the new anti-SLAPP legislation.(4)


So let's review.. it's now march 10th 2012 49 months after the mise-en-demeur of jan29 2008 .. she won, and then lost, we won and were offered mediation feb10 2012 .. all of a sudden the munis were ready to offer us money to buy peace. Some people came to an agreement but most not... to throw gas on the embers the local newspaper lAction published a piece that pointed the finger at the citizens once again until others and I complained and it was retracted and withdrawn from the website.
 .. this option was never given to the citizens because no words paragraphs or quotes were ever presented in the initial mises-en-demeur and I was subject to verbal abuse and harrasment in that  2 page document and discounting the english101 translation  ..they just gave us a deadline to remove any diffamation from the website without giving examples. only in court did I know what they objected to


Feb 6 2008 The night of the raid the Munis were not even able to present a rider of quotes they deemed offensive. They proceeded to take the contents of my hard drive passwords banking information and homemovies.. too broad of a search for their mandate and no legal representation available to me that night.. on this they lose bigtime.


So what happened to the mediation ? since I am all alone now no representation I'm once again in the dark .. what's next? I get a chance to ask this question at the monthly muni meeting on tuesday nite at CityHall .. who knows maybe we'll finally get some justice here in this town of Rawdon




ft note 


(1) legal documents submitted in P5 gave rawdon@qc.net as the website.. doesn't make much difference to check the facts when you put on the bullysuit..
(2) so nowhere when asked by the appeal court to submit memoirs the munis DR had nothing more to ad. Except to delay once again.
(3) Daniel Romano http://www.thesuburbannews.ca/content/en/3697
(4) thanks to Daniel Romano is a Montreal lawyer and founder of CAGE (Citizens Against Government Encroachment)



MORE TO COME ...