{"id":21215,"date":"2014-04-02T16:32:20","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T21:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=21215"},"modified":"2014-04-02T19:54:42","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T00:54:42","slug":"michael-bird-v-david-jenkins-lawsuit-the-final-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/michael-bird-v-david-jenkins-lawsuit-the-final-chapter\/","title":{"rendered":"Bishop Michael Bird v. David Jenkins lawsuit. The final chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As many of you will be aware, in February 2013 Bishop Michael Bird <a href=\"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/bishop-michael-bird\/bishop-michael-bird-is-suing-me\/\" target=\"_blank\">sued me<\/a> for defamation of character. I was served on February 19<sup>th<\/sup>, five years to the day that my church, St. Hilda\u2019s was served with papers to take possession of the church building and freeze our bank account.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit has now been settled; hence the post beneath this one.<\/p>\n<p>I thought it might be instructive to catalogue much of what has occurred between February last year and today.<\/p>\n<p>In brief, the claim sought:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$400,000 in damages plus court costs and their legal costs.<\/li>\n<li>An interim and permanent injunction to shut down Anglican Samizdat.<\/li>\n<li>An interim and permanent injunction prohibiting me from publishing further comments about Michael Bird.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here is a summary of what has happened:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><\/strong><strong>2013<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<strong> March<br \/>\n<\/strong>An initial attempt on my part to achieve an early settlement was rebuffed since I was unwilling to \u201cput some money on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>April<\/strong><b><br \/>\n<\/b>I filed my statement of defence.<br \/>\nI received the initial Discovery Plan from Bird\u2019s lawyer and the Pleadings were closed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>May<br \/>\n<\/strong>The Hamilton Spectator published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thespec.com\/news-story\/2550585-hamilton-based-anglican-bishop-suing-blogger\/\" target=\"_blank\">an article<\/a> on the lawsuit.<br \/>\nThe Anglican Journal published <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anglicanjournal.com\/articles\/bishop-sues-blogger-for-defamation\" target=\"_blank\">an article<\/a> on the lawsuit.<br \/>\nThe <a href=\"geoconger.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/13\/bishop-sues-troublesome-blogger-the-church-of-england-newspaper-may-12-2013-p-6\/\" target=\"_blank\">Church of England Newspaper<\/a>, and various bloggers including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.virtueonline.org\/portal\/modules\/news\/article.php?storyid=17509\" target=\"_blank\">VOL<\/a> posted articles.<\/p>\n<p>Following this publicity, I received a formal Offer to Settle which included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I pay $50,000 damages plus Bird\u2019s legal costs.<\/li>\n<li>I remove the complained of posts.<\/li>\n<li>I remove any other things I may have said that refer to Bird anywhere else on the Internet.<\/li>\n<li>I cooperate in removing anything said about Bird by third parties anywhere on the Internet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I responded with an offer to settle that included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I remove the complained of posts.<\/li>\n<li>We each pay our own legal fees.<\/li>\n<li>I donate $5000 to World Vision in Michael Bird\u2019s name.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There was no response to my offer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>October<\/strong><br \/>\nAfter numerous delays, the Examination for Discovery took place.<\/p>\n<p>Directly after Discovery, Bird\u2019s lawyer made a new offer to settle:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I pay Michel Bird\u2019s legal expense but no damages.<\/li>\n<li>I publish an apology.<\/li>\n<li>I remove the complained of posts.<\/li>\n<li>I agree not to publish any similar posts about Michael Bird in the future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Michael Bird\u2019s legal expenses amounted to $24,000. I made a counter-offer of $12,000 in addition to the other items.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>2014<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<strong> January<br \/>\n<\/strong>Michael Bird\u2019s lawyer made another offer of $18,000 for legal expenses in addition to the other items.<\/p>\n<p><strong>February<br \/>\n<\/strong>I decided that further financial haggling was <i>infra dig<\/i>, so I agreed to the terms.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to thank everyone for their prayers and support during this interesting episode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As many of you will be aware, in February 2013 Bishop Michael Bird sued me for defamation of character. I was served on February 19th, five years to the day that my church, St. Hilda\u2019s was served with papers to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/michael-bird-v-david-jenkins-lawsuit-the-final-chapter\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[2058,2188],"class_list":["post-21215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lawsuit","tag-bishop-michael-bird","tag-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}