N.S. fishing lodge owners targeted online win another suit against Mississippi blogger

It is one of those strange stories that seems to be a product of the Internet age.

A Mississippi blogger owes the owners of a Nova Scotia fishing lodge almost a million dollars after targeting them online in a homophobic smear campaign that tied them inexplicably to a corruption scandal.

The latest judgment, according to the Toronto Star, was handed down earlier this month in Nova Scotia Supreme Court. It awarded Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret $390,000 for copyright infringement by blogger Douglas K. Handshoe over unauthorized use of photos from the Trout Point Lodge website.

Leary and Perret, both transplanted Americans, had previously won $427,000 in damages in 2012 when the Nova Scotia Supreme Court found Handshoe, an accountant by profession, guilty of defamation and invasion of privacy, among other things.

[ Related: $425K in damages in Trout Point defamation case ]

Handshoe, who ignored the earlier suit but not this one, had torn into Leary, Perret and their partner, Daniel Abel, over their alleged connections to Aaron Broussard. As president of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, Broussard was at the centre of bribery and corruption allegations and subsequently pleaded guilty.

The connection, first made by the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2010, turned out to be erroneous. The newspaper retracted it and issued an apology the following year, the Star said. But that didn't stop Handshoe.

In its 2012 decision, the court noted Handshoe made many defamatory comments, including claims the plaintiffs were connected with Broussard in a business venture and that he was a co-owner of their fishing lodge.

Handshoe went further, the court said, by alleging Leary had committed perjury and that Trout Point was on the verge of bankruptcy. He also claimed Leary and Perret were con men and referred to them using "anti-gay rhetoric and homophobic comments."

Handshoe refused to participate in the suit, the judge noted, and in fact threatened to keep up the barrage as long as he was being sued.

"The reason for this is that this band of gay men act as a unit that will also scatter like cockroaches when the heat is applied," he wrote on his blog, according to the court judgment.

Leary and Perret won a default judgment but have not been able to collect. A U.S. Federal District Circuit Court of Appeal judge blocked enforcement of the damage award under American legislation that makes libel judgments unenforceable if deemed not to comply with the U.S. Constitution's protection of free speech.

This time, Leary and Perret did an end-run around the constitutional loophole by claiming copyright infringement.

[ Related: Yoga guru Bikram Choudhury accused of rape and racism in explosive lawsuit ]

In his decision handed down on Valentine's Day, Justice Kevin Coady essentially reinforced the findings of the earlier case but also concluded the purloined photos Handshoe used were a part of the defamation.

“Their misuse amounted to an ongoing campaign to damage, harass and embarrass the applicants,” Coady wrote, the Star said.

The judge awarded $80,000 in statutory damages for use of the photos and a further $300,000 in punitive damages, which Trout Point noted on its web site "are very rarely awarded in copyright infringement cases."

Unlike the previous case, the copyright infringement should not run afoul of the free-speech protection Handshoe hid behind in the defamation case, the lodge's owners believe.

But Handshoe remains defiant, telling the Star the Nova Scotia court decision was "worthless" and vowing to continue urging American tourists to stay away from Trout Point Lodge.