TORONTO, ON: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is disappointed that the Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal of Chris Barber, Tamara Lich, and hundreds of protestors and donors in the $290 million class-action lawsuit against the Freedom Convoy. The Freedom Convoy defendants had asked the Court to overturn the dismissal of an Anti-SLAPP motion. The class-action lawsuit will continue to proceed.
In January and February 2022, thousands of peaceful Freedom Convoy protestors sought an audience with the federal government, hoping to see the end of the federal Covid vaccine mandates that negatively impacted millions of Canadians.
It was not long before Ottawa residents Zexi Li and Geoffrey Delaney, Happy Goat Coffee Company, and a local union (the plaintiffs) had commenced a $290 million class-action lawsuit against Chris Barber, Tamara Lich, and other Freedom Convoy participants (the defendants). Their lawsuit seeks damages from the people they alleged organized the Freedom Convoy: the truckers who parked their trucks in downtown Ottawa and who honked their horns. Their lawsuit even seeks damages from all those who donated to the Freedom Convoy after February 4, 2022. They argue that every donor “knew or ought to have known” by that time that their donations would be used to commit the alleged harms to the plaintiffs.
In June 2023, our lawyers launched what is known as an “Anti-SLAPP” motion on behalf of the defendants. “SLAPP” actions, or “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation,” are designed to intimidate and/or bankrupt critics by burdening them with the costs of a legal defence. The “Anti-SLAPP” provisions protect freedom of expression and weed out cases from the system that were clearly designed to stifle free speech. If the motion had succeeded then, the whole case would have been thrown out.
On February 5, 2024, Justice Calum MacLeod dismissed the Anti-SLAPP motion at the Superior Court of Ontario.
Undeterred, our lawyers appealed that decision. The appeal hearing took place on October 28, 2024, in Toronto. Unfortunately, the appeal was not successful.
Lawyer Chris Fleury stated, “We are disappointed by this outcome but will continue vigorously defending our clients in this proceeding, including at any certification motion, and at a trial if necessary.”
