Advocate urges P.E.I. to draft anti-SLAPP legislation, in light of suit filed by developer

The director of the Centre for Free Expression is joining a call for the P.E.I. government to protect Islanders from legal actions designed to silence them from speaking out on matters of public interest.

James Turk told CBC's Island Morning that he believes a prominent developer's lawsuit against the Environmental Coalition of P.E.I. amounts to a SLAPP, an acronym for "strategic lawsuit against public participation."

Developer Tim Banks is suing the coalition and three other defendants over what his court filings describe as a conspiracy to "impede and confound" his efforts to develop or sell land he owns in the middle of a P.E.I. National Park site at Greenwich.

Turk, whose institution is based at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), said SLAPPs are an "abusive use" of the court process to force the people being sued to give up their cause. 

"A SLAPP suit is essentially an attempt to use legal procedure to silence a critic or someone whose views you don't like with the kind of lawsuit that the person being sued would probably win if they had enough money to go through the court process… but typically they don't," he said.

"Most people affected by SLAPP suits are people who are never sued." 

ECOPEI filed an appeal with the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission (IRAC) last August that questioned the province's decision to grant Banks a development permit to build on land he owns in Greenwich.

Two months later, Banks filed a statement of claim naming ECOPEI and others, including a representative of Island Nature Trust.

The suit alleges the defendants "conspired with each other to slander Mr. Banks' title to the subject properties and took direct action to actively impede and confound Mr. Banks' efforts to develop and/or sell the subject properties."

Banks is seeking an undisclosed amount of general damages along with punitive, exemplary and aggravated damages.

In its statement of defence, ECOPEI denies the allegations, calling Banks' claim "an abuse of process, and an improper use of civil litigation to intimidate and harass a non-profit public interest organization."

Turk said P.E.I. should follow the lead of provinces like Ontario and B.C., along with dozens of U.S. states, in enacting anti-SLAPP legislation. 

That would compel the person or group that brings a lawsuit to satisfy a judge that the suit has substantial merit and that there is no valid defence against its accusations. 

If the suit is dismissed, defendants can recover 100 per cent of their court costs.