| Apr 27, 2017


Last week, a settlement was reached through mediation to end a defamation lawsuit that was launched in 2013 by former Frontenac County Warden Janet Gutowski against three former colleagues on County Council; David Jones, Dennis Doyle and John McDougall.

Terms of the agreement have not been released, and according to Gutowski details of the agreement are subject to a confidentiality clause.

“I thought it was over, and while the terms are confidential I can tell you that I was pleased it was settled and we can all move on,” she said when contacted on Tuesday, “but I just read an online article where Dennis Doyle and even John McDougall have made comments about the matter that I wonder about. I’m sending that article to my lawyer to see what he thinks. I think they are skating on thin ice to imply wrongdoing on my part, given the agreement that we reached.”

In the article, which appeared on the Whig Standard website on Tuesday afternoon, Dennis Doyle made comments about one of the underlying legal issues in the case, the idea that statements made by members of municipal councils at meetings should be considered “privileged communication” the way statements made in the federal and provincial legislature are, and thus not subject to defamation laws.

Lawyers representing the three men argued this point in the Ontario Court of Appeal in an attempt to have the law suit squashed, to no avail. An attempt to have the same matter considered by the Supreme Court of Canada was scuttled when the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case.

“We thought we should get the same privilege to speak openly in our council chamber just like they do in the province and federally,” Doyle told the Whig after the settlement, adding “are we not supposed to speak up when we see something is wrong? That’s what we are there for. That’s our job. It would be irresponsible if we felt something was wrong and we just sat there and said nothing.”

It was that final line in particular that led Gutowski to send the article to her lawyer.

In that same Whig article, John McDougall is quoted as saying, “It does seem strange to me that you can’t just speak your mind even when it’s at a time when you are a little more emotionally involved than you might want to be.”

The lawsuit itself was caused by some of the wording in a motion in May of 2013 that was put forward by former Frontenac County Councillor David Jones, which accused then Warden Gutowski of “influence peddling” over some of the negotiations that were taking place at the time between Gutowski and members of council aimed at breaking a deadlock over approving the annual county budget.

While Jones made the written statements in the motion and made other accusations of wrongdoing while speaking in favour of it before it was voted on, Doyle, McDougall and the late Bud Clayton were named in the lawsuit because they voted in favour of the motion, not necessarily for anything they said at the time. Bud Clayton’s name was pulled from the suit when he died in September of 2014.

John McDougall told the News on Tuesday that “in retrospect, if something like that ever happened again, I would probably be more careful about the wording of the motion.”

He was surprised to hear about Gutowski’s reaction to the comments in the Whig, however.

“When the lawyers asked us if we wanted to know the terms of the agreement, we said we did not want to know,  and we don’t know the terms. I’m not sure what this is all about. I do think that at some point the Supreme Court will look at absolute privilege, even if they didn’t in this case,” he said. “Personally I’d like to let this specific matter lie, and not discuss it any more,”

Dennis Doyle also was surprised when told that Gutowski thought his comments to the Whig Standard were problematic.

“Elliot [Whig reporter Elliot Ferguson] asked me some questions about the absolute privilege that provincial and federal politicians enjoy, and I said that we need to be able to speak freely at municipal council as well. Why would people put themselves on the line by running for council if they can get sued just for saying what they think.”

Legal fees for the three men facing the law suit were paid by Frontenac County, with those fees and settlement itself being covered by the county insurance policy, with a $10,000 deductible coming from county funds.

“I chose not to go that route”, Gutowski said. I felt it was a dispute between my colleagues and myself and did not want to involve the ratepayers.”

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