Anglican Journal: Bishop settles lawsuit with blogger

Read it all here:

The settlement also stipulated that Jenkins would pay “a majority of the legal costs involved, remove the Bishop from his posts, and agree not to publish any similar posts about the Bishop in the future,” according to a release issued by the diocese of Niagara. In a related post on Anglican Samizdat, Jenkins noted that he had agreed to pay $18,000 toward legal costs, which Bird’s lawyer had stated were $24,000. Jenkins did not pay damages, which were listed as $400,000 in the original claim filed in February 2013.

Jenkins’s statement of defence had denied that his postings were libelous or defamatory. It asserted that he was exercising his freedom of religion and expression and that his comments were “…intended to be humourous and make use of satire, sarcasm, irony, hyperbole, wit, ‘send up’ and other types of humour to make a point other than what one would take literally from the comments. In those cases, no reasonable viewer or reader of the blog postings would be expected to believe that the statements are true…”

4 thoughts on “Anglican Journal: Bishop settles lawsuit with blogger

  1. It should never have gone to court or trial, and in a secular court at that! Paul had something to say about such a situation.

    • Defamation Tort is the only point of law where things that couldn’t possibly go to court get to go and win. It’s guilty until proven innocent.

      More thoughts on this law here:

      Guilty Until Proven Innocent: The Tort of Defamation
      (starts at 3:09 goes for about 9 minutes)

  2. A chapter has been written. We say good-bye to the past. We move on to the future. We continue to live in the presence of the triune God.

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