The appeal from the trial decision in St. Lewis v. Rancourt was recently listed to be heard at the Court of Appeal for Ontario on June 26, 2015, at 10:30 AM.
The self-represented appellant's factum (Rancourt's argument) on appeal is HERE. The factum summary reads:
SUMMARY — In this defamation trial, among other errors, the judge circumvented the jury by saying that the defendant (a blogger) had “no defence”. The judge said: “The defendant here has not introduced any evidence establishing a defence. Therefore, there is no defence for you to consider.” In fact, the defendant had explained his defences to the jury on the first day of trial and more than sufficient evidence to establish his defences was entered by the plaintiff while the defendant was present.
The respondent's (St. Lewis's) responding factum is HERE.
The private respondent's/plaintiff's legal-costs are entirely funded by the non-party University of Ottawa. The defendant's pre-trial motion that this funding was improper and constituted maintenance and champerty was dismissed prior to trial. (See court documents HERE.)
The appellant made two motions to the Court of Appeal, which were determined prior to the listing for hearing of the appeal:
1. A first motion was for the appellant to obtain non-public communications made during trial between the defendant's lawyer and the trial judge. This motion was dismissed. The motions judge decided not to order disclosure of the communications.
2. A second motion was to overturn a Registrar's decision, based on a technicality, to not accept the filing of the appellant's supplementary factum respecting costs of the trial, in which it was argued that the costs were unconstitutional. The motion was dismissed and the supplementary factum (HERE) was denied filing.
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