MONTREAL – Superior Court Justice Claude Larouche must remove himself from an on-going defamation case involving Quebecor Media head Pierre Karl Peladeau, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday.
Peladeau’s defamation suit against Sylvain Lafrance, VP of Radio-Canada, was filed after Lafrance was quoted in a 2007 article saying, "This guy (Pierre Karl Peladeau) walks around like a hoodlum and is about to derail one of the world’s most successful television broadcasting systems." According to a report in the Montreal Gazette, Lafrance was referring to a decision by Quebecor-owned Videotron to suspend its payments to the Canadian Television Fund (now the Canadian Media Fund) over objections that more than one-third of the budget went to the CBC and an auditor-general’s report that criticized the fund’s governance.
Peladeau originally sued for $2.1 million but has since dropped the amount to $700,000. Peladeau’s lawyer said that a recusal order was filed after Justice Larouche presented two articles about Peladeau in court and insinuated that Peladeau conspired to have the stories about him appear while he was in court.
Quebecor spokesperson Serge Sasseville issued a statement expressing “relief” at the Appeal court’s decision, and implied that the matter could be dropped if Lafrance and Radio-Canada apologized to Peladeau for the remarks.
