Tangled, web-waged war
Trout Point Lodge Resort in the hinterlands of Kempt, Nova Scotia, has long been known as one of the region’s most-promoted tourism venues and the recipient of many industry accolades.
But the Lodge, and owners Vaughn Perret, Charles Leary and Danny Abel, have been even better known recently for the wide web of legal tangles that have engulfed them in the past three years.
On Thursday morning Leary and Perret are scheduled to appear in a Yarmouth Supreme Court to appeal to a justice for hearing date on their claim that Mississippi blogger Doug Handshoe has violated United States internet copyright infringement laws by posting a photo of the pair on his Slabbed blog.
Three-year war
The hearing is the latest episode in what would appear to be part of a three-year legal war between Trout Point owners and Handshoe, whose blog was created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the various insurance and political corruptions which occurred then. Handshoe soon turned an eye to political corruption in and around New Orleans, some of which centred around the multi-million dollar River Birch landfill project and a corrupt Jefferson Parish official named Aaron Broussard, who is a former legal colleague of Danny Abel and who owned property adjacent to Trout Point Lodge.
River Birch landfill conglomerate executives and those with related firms are now under federal indictment in New Orleans and federal prosecutors have moved to sieze assets in some cases. The firm was thought to have paid Broussard and other politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for cooperation on receiving lucrative contracts.
Broussard co-founded a Nova Scotia firm called Public Works Investments in 1999, with a Trout Point Lodge mailing address and, according to testimony by Leary/Perret in previous cases, had some of his properties marketed through the Lodge. Broussard and fellow bureaucrats pleaded guilty in 2012 and he is expected to be sentenced to eight to fifteen years in prison later this month.
Accusations & retractions
Leary/Perret enaged in legal battles with New Orleans newspapers and TV stations and Slabbed/Handshoe, plus the owners of the popular Wordpress software, challenging assertions linking them to the corrupt practices of Broussard. The media outlets identified Aaron Broussard as an owner of Trout Point Lodge.
The Times Picayune, Fox8 and WWLTV eventually published retractions and Slabbed suffered a default defamation judgement in Nova Scotia, resulting in a half-million dollar award. The pair’s attempt to get a U.S federal court to uphold the award failed and Leary/Perret have appealed that ruling.
As part of the Leary/Perret submission for Thursday, they include correspondence with Slabbed’s web host, citing the U.S. law, referred to as Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), which, in part, governs the rights of publishers and citizens on the internet.
Leary/Perret also submitted as evidence a copy of a recent, additional defamation suit against Handshoe and Wordpress owner Automatic, naming River Birch attorneys and SCT publisher Timothy Gillespie as “co-conspirators”. In that suit, Leary/Perret claim that Handshoe has falsely accused them of “perjury, grifting, graft, fraud, lying, racketeering, filing frivolous and/or SLAPP lawsuits, being bag men and "nefarious," litigiousness, money laundering, funnelling of bribes, funnelling of illegal kickbacks, money laundering for drug cartels, involvement in organized crime, and involvement with the corrupt practices of Louisiana politicians including the implementation of kick-back and "pay to play" schemes.”
The pair claim in the suit that “such false statements of facts are particularly damaging to the reputations of Perret, an attorney licensed in 2 states, and Leary, a former professor of history.”
Prior to the recent court filing, that defamation action was amended, removing Handshoe, River Birch legal team and Gillespie and leaving Automatic as the only defendant. The court was not provided a copy of the amended complaint.
Whistleblower defamation?
New Orleans lawyer and Trout Point Lodge owner Danny Abel has also recently filed a defamation suit against Handshoe and fellow attorney Anne Marie Vandenweghe, who, while working in the admittedly corrupt administration of Aaron Broussard, is credited with being the whistleblower who advised the FBI and Justice Department of Broussard and his staff’s illegal actions.
Sources in the U.S.A. tell SCT that the current copyright suit by Leary/Perret appears to be a “back door” attempt by the pair to assert Nova Scotia legal authority over U.S. law, affording them a possibility of collecting on the large judgement from 2012. “The plaintiffs [Leary/Perret] attempt to invoke US law and seek its protections is ironic,” says Louisiana attorney, Jack E. “Bobby” Truitt. “The DMCA is a US law, which is not applicable, as far as I know, in Canada. So, for the plaintiffs to try to seek redress is confusing, and hopefully, a Canadian judge would realize this on his or her own.”
Windmill tilting
Truitt went on to say, that, while pressing their defamation claims in a SPEECH Act lawsuit in Federal court in Mississippi, “the plaintiffs vociferously argued that Canadian law should trump US laws regarding free speech.”
“These plaintiffs,” added Truitt, “should focus on running their lodge and managing what was formerly Aaron Broussard’s properties rather than tilting at lawsuit windmills.”
Handshoe, who describes himself as a forensic CPA, was reluctant to comment widely on the most current legal moves by Trout Point owners, but did explain that he was given less than 72 hours notice to travel to Nova scotia from Mississippi to appear at the hearing. He told SCT, “If Perret and Leary and Abel think they can manipulate the federal courts in Mississippi by continuing to file actions in Nova Scotia, they are sadly mistaken.”
While declining comments of specifics of the copyright matter, Handshoe said that he felt his legal team had the matter well in hand.
