Comedian Mike Ward speaks to the media at the Quebec Court of Appeal in Montreal on January 16, 2019. Ryan Remiorz / The Canadian Press
A Quebec comedian who won a Canadian Supreme Court human rights case last year has won another legal victory against one of his accusers.
A Quebec court judge has dismissed a defamation suit against comedian Mike Ward in connection with a joke he made between 2010 and 2013 about Jeremy Gabriel, who at the time was a well-known teenage singer with a disability.
Gabriel’s mother, Sylvie Gabriel, was seeking $ 84,600 from Ward, arguing that the joke she made at the expense of her son caused her significant harm.
Judge Manon Gaudreault dismissed the lawsuit and wrote that the one-year period for filing a defamation suit had passed, even considering how long the case had been in other courts.
However, Gaudreault’s May 30 ruling rejected Ward’s claim that Sylvie Gabriel’s lawsuit was abusive and an overuse of the legal system.
The decision is the latest step in a long legal saga between the Gabriel and Ward family, culminating in a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada last fall stating that Ward’s comments do not amount to discrimination under the Bill of Rights. of Quebec.
Jeremy Gabriel has Treacher Collins Syndrome, a congenital disease characterized by deformities of the skull and face. When Ward offered his comedy routine mocking Jeremy Gabriel, the teen was a well-known singer who had appeared alongside Celine Dion and the Pope.
In 2016, a Quebec human rights court ordered Ward to pay $ 35,000 in damages to Gabriel and $ 7,000 to his mother based on the statements, which included a joke about the singer’s drowning. But that case reached the Supreme Court, confronting artistic expression, in the form of a black comedy, with the protection of dignity.
In a 5-4 ruling last October, the country’s highest court concluded that the elements of a discrimination claim under the Quebec letter had not been established in the case. The court also said the singer and his mother chose the wrong court, the human rights court, for their case.
Jeremy Gabriel has also filed a separate $ 288,000 lawsuit against Ward in the Quebec Superior Court.
Ward’s attorney, Julius Gray, says he will seek to have that lawsuit dismissed at a June 29 hearing.
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