Things Get Interesting

It's been quite a while since I posted. There has been a lot going on, but some of it involved delicate negotiations between myself and opposing counsel (none of which came to fruition) and I didn't want to queer the deal(s) by blogging about them. On top of which, there wasn't much good to report (from the Marty Green point of view.)

Until now.

Things got interesting last week. But to understand how it all came together, we have to go back to last December.

I have three lawsuits on the go against the University of Winnipeg. One for kicking me out of my teaching practicum at Gordon Bell (that was in 2011), another for kicking me out of the Education Faculty at the university (which happened in 2012), and another for defamation. (That's the one where they accused me of trying to break into Professor Bush's home in 2013.)

The University has been trying to get all three cases thrown out of court. They first moved for summary judgment in the practicum case. They lost their motion in the Master's Chambers, and appealed to the Queen's Bench. That appeal was argued last December, but the argument got adjourned halfway through when I told the Judge I would be seeking leave to appeal my statement of claim.

The problem with that case was that I had sued for Conspiracy to Injure. I claimed that the University had got together with the principal of Gordon Bell, Mrs. Skull, and concocted a scheme to get me kicked out of the program using her special authority as school principal. The nice thing about that was it denied me any avenue of appeal. I was ambushed one morning on my way to class, escorted off the property, and that was that. It was a done deal.

I told you that the University moved for summary judgment, and they lost. But the complication was that after they lost, the schoolteachers moved separately for summary judgment. And they won. I appealed to Queen's Bench, and then to the Court of Appeal, and lost each time. You can read about those appeals here and here. Technically, I still have one more level of appeal, to the Supreme Court of Canada. I've filed leave for appeal, but that's a pretty faint hope. In practical terms, Mrs. Skull seems to be off the hook.

But that screws up my claim against the university. Without the co-conspirators, where is the conspiracy. I could see the argument wasn't going well for me last December before Justice Edmond, and that's when I asked for an adjournment. We'll come back to that later.

The other case against the University was for kicking me out of school. This one was a little different. They didn't ask for Summary Judgment: they made a Motion to Strike. That means they don't have to file a Statement of Defence. They simply argue that the Statement of Claim, even if accepted in its entirety, fails to disclose a reasonable Cause of Action. We argued that in December of 2013 before Master Berthaudin, and the University won. My claim was struck, and I appealed to have it re-instated. After a lot of procedural wrangling, we finally appeared before Justice Edmond in December of 2014 to argue the case.

This one was argued to completion, but I got the distinct impression that whatever I was selling, Justice Edmond wasn't buying. So after we left the courtroom, I drafted up a new set of amendments to my claim, and filed for leave to amend.  The University announced they would be opposing my amendments in both cases, so I set to work preparing my arguments.

If that wasn't enough, I filed some rather routine amendments in my defamation case. What happened is that when I filed my original claim, I didn't have the exact words used when they accused me of the home invasion. I only got disclosure of these thanks to the criminal trial, which I won. My original claim said something to the effect of "exact words to be provided pending discovery". Which I now effectively had. So these amendments should have been straightforward, but perhaps out of reflex, the University again opposed the amendments. And of course, in the meantime they had filed a motion for Summary Judgement, denying that they had defamed me, and claiming that even if they had, whatever they had said was protected by the doctrine of Qualified Privilege. We'll come back to that later.

So where did we stand? As of January this year, there were three motions to throw me out: one of them argued to completion (the University expulsion), one of them adjourned halfway (the Practicum Removal), and one of them pending (the Home Invasion defamations). And I had three motions to amend my pleadings, all of which the University was opposing.

And that's where it gets interesting.