By Pepper Parr
October 19, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
Our lawyers received the following letter from lawyer Peter E. J. Wells, who represents the Burlington Air Park.
“I am writing to you concerning an article dated October 17, 2014 that was brought to my attention last evening, the 16th. I enclose a copy for you reference. The passage in the article that is of concern is:
“It used to be that people would sue us for libel hoping that would shut us down. Now they are resorting to really sneaking dirty tricks -we must be doing something right.” Unless some other party has recently commenced a libel action against your client, the first sentence plainly refers to our client.
I assume that your client did not mean to imply that our client had anything to do with the hacking, if only because that would be further evidence of the malice that we have piiiaded (word un-decipherable) in the statement of claim. This sort of unfortunate word order leading to an unintended meaning happens from time to time in publications.
At page 45 of his book “For Whom The Bell Tolls’.’ Guardian production editor David Marsh gives the following example from an article in The Times about the late actor Peter Ustinov, who was said to have referred to “his encounters with Nelson Mandela, a demigod and a dildo collector.” Marsh suggests that the writer intended to say “encounters with a demigod, a dildo collector and Nelson Mandela.”
First, we were certainly not suggesting that the Burlington Air Park did the hack on our system. There field of expertise is the dumping of landfill without the required approvals.
We were impressed with just how well read the Air Park lawyer is – The Times, the Guardian and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Impressive.
Nelson Mandela a dildo collector? Who knew!
Wells, in his letter, goes on to ask that:
“In the circumstances I expect a prompt, clear retraction to be published by your client making it clear that your client did not intend to suggest that our client had anything to do with the hacking referred to.
We didn’t say the Air Park hacked us. Were we suggesting they might have? We didn’t think so and are comfortable saying that we did not intend to suggest the Air Park had anything to do with the hack that was done to our system.
We do appreciate learning more about the late Nelson Mandela.
Full disclosure. Burlington lawyer Katherine Henshell represents the Burlington Gazette in this matter. She is a candidate for the ward one council seat.
I am not concerned with the Airpark situation, but just want to pont out to you what I have said before: you need some knowledge of grammar and are in need of an editor. Whatever my feelings are about the Airpark, I have to agree with the lawyer that order of words and commas is what makes a statement clear. Ustenov did not mean to state that Mandella was a dildo collector, but because he gave a wrong order of words, did, in fact, say so. The same can be said of your original release on the hacking of your site. You may not mean to accuse the Airpark. but, alas, you left that impression.
What an odd letter from a lawyer. The lawyer, doth protest too much, methinks.
Really? “To the best of our knowledge at this time?” Doesn’t that sound grudging to you? Perhaps even petulant? Childish? It certainly does not resemble a full and fair retraction, nor does the response contain an apology.
You still sound pretty malicious to me.