OT: Kitchener Rangers plan to sue The Michigan Daily, Matt Slovin

My guess is the daily will get legal assistance from the law school and shouldn't have much to fear.

"Daily editor-in-chief Jacob Axelrad said he couldn’t comment. When asked if he still stands by the story, which remained on the paper’s website Monday, he hung up the telephone." 

I bet that isn't a true representation of how the conversation went.  Which part of "can't comment" did the reporter not understand?

I'm still confused as to why ther're suing for this. What are we, two year olds?

Litigation such as this is proof that the legal system is in need of a massive overhaul.  

Where else are they going to get the money to pay Trouba to play for them?

The Daily has an easy case: Prove the report is true. If they have facts and proof that their report is accurate, the accuser has no argument. That being said, they never should have ran the story without legitimate proof. I certainly hope Slovin has his stuff together.

This seems a little pathetic for a large organization to be trying to take down a student paper, but I still say, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the info in the article isn't great.  I've seen some things in the Daily that left me scratching my head, especially regarding sports.

Either way, I'm sure they'll have a solid defense team

I just hope their source is actually on record at some point and it wasnt a random phone call. 

Thing that ticks me off is Kitchener's high and mighty attitude and talking about slander when everyone knows what goes on in the CHL. 

Seems like Freedom of Speech/Press might come in here somewhere. Are newspapers not allowed to be wrong about things? Especially sports things? Can ESPN be sued every time they hear that X team is thinking about trading for Y player and it doesn't happen?

What a bunch of babies up there in Kitchener. I can't imagine this will last more than 5 minutes in any court.

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA

/deep breath

AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Unless they filed this in Canada, and Canada has radically different slander laws, this lawsuit has less than zero chance. You can't sue to say "prove it or retract it." It doesn't work that way. Kitchener has to demonstrate by a proponderance of the evidence that the Daily published this information KNOWING it was not true (or in reckless disregard for it's apparent falsehood), and did so with an intent to harm the defamed party.

It's a PR move, and a ridiculous one at that. It'll never survive an MTD.

Wherefore art thou? Any input on this? I always appreciate your perspective on these things.

This lawsuit isn't going anywhere, Kitchener knows this. They just want to make sure they make a big public stink so that people hear them cry about it. You guys have to understand that they get away with paying players $45 a week, which is horseshit. If they admitted to giving certain guys a lot of money, there would be an uprising.

When I played, we had several discussions about trying to start some sort of union and telling the league and coaches to stop exploiting us but guys were too scared that it would ruin their careers, which it would. Your hockey career depends so much on what your coaches tell NHL scouts and GMs.

Like I said, I have no problem telling you guys that I know for a fact that there have been several under the table payments to lure Americans and that this stuff has almost blown up on several occasions but is always kept quiet. No OHL team has ever paid a player 500k. But 200k is very close to the actual figures.

This causes a lot of interal fighting in the O. Loyal superstars who make their coaches and owners millions of dollars make $45 a week for 3-4 seasons and then they turn around and pay some American (usually) a huge sum of cash for what usually amounts to one season, two at the most.

Are payments like this prevalent in the CHL?  Is it out of the realm of possibility?

ed: beaten above.  Thanks, JimLahey.

I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice, but then again they also unleashed Nickelback and Justin Bieber on the unsuspecting masses.

As I read this, there is no law suit.

What was "served" was a letter demanding a retraction.  Such letters are common in defamation claims.  They have meaning, usually, only in terms of damages later if indeed a case can be made.

So there is no law suit.  The term "served" may have a different meaning in Canada; and there may be a "proof of service" with the letter.  But it doesn't mean "served with a Summons and Complaint..."

If there were to be a lawsuit, I can only presume that it would be in the form of an action naming "The Regents of the University of Michigan," under whose charter the Daily publishes.  That cause of action would have to be filed in the Court of Claims, as it involves a state defendant.

They could file an action in Canada, I suppose, which would go nowhere unless they obtained jurisdiction over the Regents there.  (I don't think so.)

And as for all of this smart-sounding b.s. that I have just recited for you.  Means nothing, I'll bet.  I think this is all baloney and p.r. posturing by the Canadians.

if this was filed in Canada or the US?

Kitchener is taking these steps for show, obviously, and it's very easy to see why they're going further against Slovin than they did against Notre Dame: The Daily is financially independent, and therefore small and vulnerable. If they sued Jackson they would incur the financial resources of a major American University, which they couldn't compete with even if their argument wasn't specious.

Interesting that this pops up a few weeks after this:

http://www.thestar.com/article/653667--ohl-plans-crackdown-on-teams-breaking-rules

What reputation? And as if there was ever a suit against the media for defamation that ever worked, how in the world do they imagine the Daily has more assets than their legal fees will cost?

This is all about scaring people off from reporting what pretty much everyone already knows. If the CHL has an "outstanding reputation," then Comcast is a "leader in customer service."

If you'd like some perspective from the other side of the border (including some interesting discussion but also a generous quantity of myopic self-deception) you can check out this thread on the inaccurately named "New OHL Open Forum."

Don't bother trying to register--I've tried to get on there for years, for entirely legitimate (hockey discussion, very little controversy) purposes, but they don't maintain the site very well. 

They are filing the papers today in an Ontario court.  Oh yeah, they are seeking 1 MILLION in damages.  http://therecord.blogs.com/rangers_report/2012/07/rangers-seek-1m-in-damages.html

Canadian legal system?  I lol'd.

This was just tweeted by the Kingston (OHL) head coach: 

RT: @birkas613 Kitchener needs to let this one die. I don't think the CHL is so innocent

Canadian defamation judgements against Americans are not collectible in the US under the SPEECH Act, have to be re-proven in US court.

So apparently the daily has nothing to worry about right now because even if they're somehow found guilty in Canada, they still have to be found guilty again in the US which is really, really not going to happen

On the other hand, I do have a new Most Hated OHL Team. See ya Plymouth

These legal threads are really stupid and basically just exercises in ego-stroking for the lawyers on this board.

Are they even aware that the Daily is a college student newspaper, not a professional news outfit?  (Don't get me wrong, I love the Daily, but I mean really...)

If you follow me on Twitter (@twharry), you've already heard all of this, so ignore. If not, this is what I found:

- Kitchener has no case under US law. The threshold as I understand it is that Slovin had to have believed what his source said was true when he wrote the article. If he did, then he's in the clear. Whether the allegations are true or not is irrelevant if this case were being heard in the US.

- Kitchener filed in Canada, so the above doesn't matter.

- Canada has some of the worst, most restrictive libel laws in the western world. The burden of proof lies with the accused, so the defendant is already assumed to be guilty going into the case.

- In Canada, you can be found guilty of libel or defamation even if what you said was true.

- Slovin's article adheres to the guidelines set forth by the Canadian Association of Journalists ethics guidelines, and that plays a role in determining whether or not someone is guilty of libel in Canadian courts.

- The Canadian Supreme Court's 2006 ruling in Hill v Church of Scientology of Toronto rejected the actual malice standard common in the rest of the English-speaking world. The court opined that there was no evidence that rejecting actual malice had any sort of chilling effect on Canadian journalism. It was a very unpopular decision (and rightfully so - under this ruling, whistleblowers could be sued) and Canadian legal scholars are trying to fix it.

- Canadian courts usually require affadavit proof of publication within the province where the libel is alleged. So unless the Daily is published in Ontario, I don't see how a Canadian court could have jurisdiction.

- None of the above really matters. Under the SPEECH Act, foreign libel judgments are unenforceable in US courts unless they are re-tried in an American court and found Constitutional. So Kitchener can sue Slovin/Daily and Slovin/Daily could choose not to fight the case at all, Kitchener could win the case and they won't get a single dime of the judgment because they would have to then bring the case before a US judge and win that as well. And under US law, I don't see how there's a case.

So why is Kitchener suing? I think there are a few reasons.

First, they're trying to find their leak. These stories keep coming out, and they want to know who is spilling the beans. I think they suspect Trouba's agent/advisor.

Second, I think they want to intimidate the media to keep them from reporting these stories in the future.

Finally, I think they saw a college kid and a student newspaper and thought this would be a cake walk. They bluffed by saying that they might sue, trying to get the Daily to retract. When the Daily called their bluff, they were too immature, petty and insecure to shake it off.

Kitchener has really screwed the pooch this time.