Post: #1

I'm sure Lindy West would have a field day with this after the most recent debate...

This ruling definitely seems like it will create a slippery slope, if not a cliff, in terms of legal precedents against male comedians.

Can any of the lawyers or law students on the forum weigh in with your analysis?

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/23/...n-heckler/

Quote:In a ruling that could carry implications for comedy clubs across Canada, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the right of a bar patron to receive five-figures in damages from a comedian whose performance she alleges gave her post-traumatic stress disorder.

In 2011, Toronto comedian Guy Earle was ordered by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to pay $15,000 to Lorna Pardy, a homosexual woman who said she suffered “lasting physical and psychological effect” after Mr. Earle directed a string of lesbian slurs at her during a 2007 Vancouver open mic night.

On Wednesday, B.C. highest court ruled against Mr. Earle’s assertion that comedy clubs should remain special places devoted to the “fearless pursuit of free speech” and that the Tribunal’s decision would have a “chilling effect on performances and artists in British Columbia.”

Rather, ruled Justice Jon Sigurdson, while comedy clubs may swirl with “offensive, irreverent and inappropriate” language they are not operating in “zones of absolute immunity from human rights legislation.”

In May of 2007, Lorna Pardy and a girlfriend were at Zesty’s, a Vancouver restaurant with largely gay clientele, when an open mic night hosted by Mr. Earle kicked off. The two women decided to stay and watch the show.

According to the later findings of the Human Rights Tribunal, during the show Ms. Pardy’s girlfriend had merely pecked her on the cheek when Mr. Earle told the crowd “Don’t mind that inconsiderate dyke table over there. You know lesbians are always ruining it for everybody.”

The line prompted boos from Ms. Pardy’s table and kicked off an escalating string of slurs and lesbian-themed quips, climaxing with a pair of off-stage confrontations in which Ms. Pardy threw two glasses of water at the comedian and he, in turn, broke her sunglasses.

As Mr. Earle told it, however, the couple was passionately kissing in the front row and repeatedly interrupting the set with obscenities when Mr. Earle tried to “shut up” the table with the quip “you’re not even lesbians; no guy will f*** you, that’s why you’re with each other” — thus kicking off the ugly escalation.

After a pair of agitated conversations with the bar owner the next day, the last of which resulted in Ms. Pardy screaming to restaurant patrons that the owner condoned violence against women, Ms. Pardy took her case to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

In April, 2011, tribunal member Murray Geiger-Adams issued a detailed 102-page tribunal report that pored over diagrams of the restaurant, probed the origins of the weekly open mic night and even examined the Iraqi background of the bar’s owner (“[H]e was a member of both ethnic and Christian religious minority groups, and experienced discrimination himself,” it notes).

Further complicating matters was the fact that virtually all of the testimony came from people who had been drinking, requiring Mr. Geiger-Adams to sift through multiple competing storylines.

In the end, the tribunal ruled that Mr. Earle’s attack had aggravated Ms. Pardy’s “pre-existing condition of generalized anxiety disorder with panic attacks, and caused her PTSD.” Long after the episode, for instance, Ms. Pardy said that simply hearing Mr. Earle recount the evening in a radio interview caused her to miss work.

When asked why she did not simply leave the establishment, instead of staying until the very end of the performance, “she said she didn’t leave because she was too shocked, and that she literally could not get up from the booth,” according to decision documents. As for the water-throwing, “Mr. Earle’s conduct had put Ms. Pardy in a condition where she was unable to immediately formulate a measured, or even rational, response.”

In addition to Mr. Earle’s $15,000 penalty, the restaurant was also ordered to pay $7,000 to Ms. Pardy on the grounds that since the owner had given Mr. Earle a small bar tab to host the event, the comedian was legally an employee. Restaurant owner Salam Ismail had already spent at least $13,000 in legal fees defending himself before the tribunal.

Mr. Earle’s lawyer, meanwhile, walked out on the tribunal proceedings early, alleging it was an “illegal process.”

In a Supreme Court challenge, Mr. Earle attempted to argue that Ms. Pardy “played a vital and highly dramatic role in utterly disrupting a performance by unpaid volunteers.”

“[C]omedy clubs are like no other places, the quintessential element that distinguishes them from vapid mainstream media is the fearless pursuit of free speech.”

Nevertheless, in the judge’s words, “Mr. Earle was not giving a comedy performance when he launched into his tirade of ugly words directed at Ms. Pardy.”

“In the end, this is not a case about the scope of expression in a comedy performance or an artistic performance,” he wrote. “It is about verbal and physical abuse that amounts to adverse treatment based on sex and sexual orientation.”

National Post

Left Side: Bitterness on crusade

Right Side: Can't help but think there's a joke about PUA fashion advice somewhere here

Post: #2

We should just abolish western civilization. We have created a society whetr being a perpetual victim and an entitled adult child is to be celebrated and rewarded. Where the tyrant can reign free under the banners of political correctness and 'for the security of the people'. Nothing good will come of this. Raze the settlements and salt the earth.

Post: #3

Every single damn time that I see another article about various happenings in Canada posted here in the forums, I give myself a pat on the back for making the decision to leave Canada and never return (for anything more than a short vacation).

Post: #4

Suits, while this is beyond retarded this kind of stuff only exists in the big cities. Just avoid anything to do with gay people and people living alternative lifestyles and all you'll have to deal with is sex and the city wannabes who run 5ks for charity to make themselves feel better about the lack of a quality man in their lives.

In relation to Vancouver: stay away from Davie st, commercial drive and main street and youll never have to deal wiyh these kinds of people.

Post: #5

(06-25-2013 01:15 AM)WesternCancer Wrote:  Suits, while this is beyond retarded this kind of stuff only exists in the big cities. Just avoid anything to do with gay people and people living alternative lifestyles and all you'll have to deal with is sex and the city wannabes who run 5ks for charity to make themselves feel better about the lack of a quality man in their lives.

In relation to Vancouver: stay away from Davie st, commercial drive and main street and youll never have to deal wiyh these kinds of people.

Tragically for me, I love big cities. However, based on an evaluation of housing markets v.s. earning power potential and my ability to speak French, I've already eliminated the three key big Canadian cities as places that I wish to live.

My plan to NOT live in Canada (but retain a Canadian passport) actually started before I planned to start it.

I've spent about 23 months in Canada in the last nine years. I now speak Chinese and split my time between China and the USA, with the long term goal of being based in Hong Kong.

Returning to live in Canada would actually require real effort from me at the present. I'd be basically starting from scratch in every possible way (except for useful local knowledge and citizenship).

Post: #6

Oh, Canada

Post: #7

"So I went to the tool store and bought a circular saw. When I took it home I took the safety guard off it, because I wanted to, then I cut my thumb off. I'm going to sue the saw company for making such unsafe tools"

That's pretty much what this sounds like to me. Retards being retards, then getting compensated for their own stupidity

Post: #8

Speech causing ptsd. This is at once outrageous and hilarious.

I see no legal reason why internet speech can't also cause ptsd.

GET

OFF

THE

GRID

Post: #9

When language falls apart, so does law.

Think about this: if sex is no longer defined as intercourse between a man and a woman, then rape can be defined differently as well.

To lesbians, sex is defined differently than it is for heteros. It is without intercourse (dick in pussy). Let's say that that lesbian sex is define as fingering and oral sex. This is because these acts have more meaning for them than intercourse.

What if we take a step further?

Maybe in the future some people will say that kissing has more meaning than oral sex, and that is their sex.

Go even further, and you have people saying that making eye contact in a certain way is sex. To them, if you look at them in a particular way, you could be raping them.

You can see where this goes, and why the ruling is ridiculous.

Post: #10

(06-25-2013 04:09 AM)xsplat Wrote:  Speech causing ptsd. This is at once outrageous and hilarious.

I see no legal reason why internet speech can't also cause ptsd.

GET

OFF

THE

GRID

Let's see if we can't sue this cunt, because reading her story caused us PTSD...

Post: #11

Canada does not have a First Amendment, and their speech laws are more restrictive. I would like to think such an action would be barred in the US.

On the other hand, dude was also at a gay club talking shit about lesbians. Not too smart.

Post: #12

Seems like they were being disruptive. This ruling is a clear sign of failure in our system. Someone mentioned victims being held high - I couldnt agree more. Only I thought this was a problem exclusive to our attention-seeking cutter teenagers.

Post: #13

Some judges are going crazy up north!

Post: #14

Quite apart from the case: Why do so many people include lesbian in the "gay" category. One of the rare true, and funny, statements from a lesbian goes something like: "Don't call us gay. Were not gay, were angry!"

Commercial Drive is the centre of lesbian Vancouver, so I'm 99.9% sure this must be a lesbian club. Makes it even stranger that he'd go off at them there. Don't think there should be any legal consequences, but he does seem to have been a bit of an idiot.

Post: #15

Quote: Commercial Drive is the centre of lesbian Vancouver, so I'm 99.9% sure this must be a lesbian club. Makes it even stranger that he'd go off at them there. Don't think there should be any legal consequences, but he does seem to have been a bit of an idiot.

And Zestys is ground zero for the Lesbians. Chances are the owner of the bar is either Greek, Portuguese or Italian. He probably tossed the comedian in there for a laugh and to see what happened.

Good troll, but the outcome of all this is ridiculous.

Post: #16

I'm also pretty sure the "Human Rights Tribunals" have something near to a 100% success rate. Higher than North Korea.

Post: #17

WE don't have freedom of speech in Canada, I've been paying attention to several different cases in our human rights kangaroo courts over the past several years, mostly the ones having to do with Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant and there's one quote I'll never forget:

In an exchange during the Marc Lemire case, lead CHRC investigator Dean Steacy was asked "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?" Steacy responded: "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value... It's not my job to give value to an American concept." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Hu...ontroversy

Probably one of the best books you can read on the subject is called Shake Down by Ezra Levant, he's a bit of a douche but makes some damn good points, as does Mark Steyn.

Ezra Levant promoting Shake Down





Mark Steyn discussing Canada's human rights commissions:

Post: #18

Sometimes my city is so goddam beta it's unbelievable... Sigh

PTSD: an unfortunate condition affecting veterans, victims of horrific crimes, witnesses of traumatic events and now offended dykes world wide.

Oh also, those are some absolutely hideous women. I actually just got off the train at commercial/broadway as well, (small world) theres alot of similar looking she-beasts there, it's pretty disturbing. If any one visits Vancouver, much like with swimming, make sure to wait 30 minutes after eating before entering comm/broadway. I don't want to have to step over your puke on the way to my train, thanks!

Post: #19

Why is there no SMH gif from tuthmosis yet?

Post: #20

Standup comedy is being strangled to death. If it weren't for podcasts, there would be no more platforms for someone to truly speak their mind.

Post: #21

(06-26-2013 09:14 PM)Only One Man Wrote:  Standup comedy is being strangled to death. If it weren't for podcasts, there would be no more platforms for someone to truly speak their mind.

True, but some comedians are now just trolling these SWPL people.