September
20, 2009
On
September 17, 2009, the Honorable Judge Denis Jacques of the Superior
Court of Quebec delivered his judgment in the defamation lawsuit
that Gifric brought against the Quebec Journal (Le Journal de Québec).
The Judge ordered the Sun Media Corporation, on behalf of the Quebec
Journal and the journalist J. Jacques Samson, to pay damages of
$145,000 to Gifric and six Gifric administrators. The judgment decided
in favor of Gifric on all of the points of the case.
The
trial took place last May and lasted seven days. It was discovered
that the journalist had written his article on the basis of a document
dated from 1990 that was full of lies and defamatory comments against
Gifric. In his judgment, the Honorable Judge Denis Jacques determined
that this article was written in order to “torpedo Gifric…by
destroying its credibility…in the course of the concilliation
process requested by the Minister of Health to settle the matter
of the Psychoanalytic Center for the Treatment of Psychosis, the
388.” The judge also noted that, without even meeting with
Gifric to get its version of the facts, the journalist forged an
opinion that he then reproduced in his newspaper column. This opinion
was judged to be “inexact, abusive ,and defamatory”
to Gifric.
It
is interesting to read the entirety of the case (currently available
in French) in order to better understand the context of Gifric’s
struggle to maintain the 388.
Download here
(PDF,
47 pages, 1.6 mg)
