Mair wants retraction
from Supreme Court judges
  
Frank Luba

Tuesday, August 26, 2008


CREDIT: Les Bazso file photo - The Province
Rafe Mair

Former Vancouver radio talk-show host Rafe Mair doesn't like being called a "shock jock."

And he wants the Supreme Court of Canada to amend a recent judgment that uses that term to describe him.

In an on-air editorial for radio station CKNW nearly a decade ago, Mair compared activist Kari Simpson to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. She sued. But the Supreme Court cleared Mair earlier this year of defamation allegations.

In his online column Monday for The Tyee, Mair said Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie "made me very angry when he referred to the kind of work I did as 'shock jock,' something not even my worst enemy would accuse me of."

"I have written the judge, giving him a resumé of my media career and asking that he change that part of the judgment."

Mair, a former lawyer and B.C. cabinet minister, was inducted into the Canadian Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame in 2005 and has published eight books.

But none of that may help him with the Supreme Court, said Joost Blom of the University of B.C. law faculty.

"You can ask the Supreme Court to reconsider a decision," Blom said Monday.

"If they make a mistake, if they misstate something, they now and then issue a correction.

"But on a thing like this, which is the adjective used, I can't imagine them going back to edit the decision in that way.

"The rule is that what a court says is absolutely privileged in terms of the court making defamatory statement.

"You can't sue a court because they said mean things about you."[/size]

fluba@theprovince.com

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/story.html?id=0dd8dbd5-abf2-468b-abf6-b0eadd5ed581

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As Mair is finding out lawyers and judges have too much power nowadays.

By the way whats with the bow tie.  Is he trying to look as goofy as Philip Till.

So, the Supreme Court said "sorry", but not nicely enough? Rafe, take the retraction and run. This is as good as its going to get, especially when the case is a decade old now. Don't worry,  nobody's going to mistake you for Howard Stern. Actually, labelling you a "shock jock" might actually give your Tyee readership a bit of a boost.

Wow, a lawyer getting miffed at a Supreme Court Justice who cleared him after ten years of legal wrangling.
That takes balls.
I wouldn't think Mr. Mair should hold his breath for "satisfaction" on this one, the pompous little self-important snot.