The Supreme Court puts an end to the attempts of Sylvie Gabriel, the mother of the man nicknamed “little Jérémy”, to obtain compensation from comedian Mike Ward.
The highest court rejected, on Thursday, the request of Ms. Gabriel, who sought to overturn an unfavorable decision against her rendered by the Court of Quebec and confirmed by the Court of Appeal.
This decision puts an end to a legal saga of almost 12 years launched by Ms. Gabriel and her son after the comedian made fun of, in a show presented from 2010 to 2013, the young disabled singer who was a teenager at the time. .
Deadline
The Supreme Court, as is its custom, did not give reasons for this refusal to hear the case, but it thus confirmed that the deadline for filing the defamation and harassment suit had expired when it did so. did, even taking into account all the time spent before multiple legal authorities over the last few years.
Sylvie Gabriel claimed $84,600 from Mike Ward on the pretext that the joke he made at her son’s expense caused him significant harm.
Jérémy Gabriel suffers from Treacher Collins syndrome, a congenital disease characterized by deformities of the skull and face. According to the Supreme Court, the comments made by the comedian about Jérémy Gabriel during a show a few years ago did not meet the criterion of discrimination invoked by the applicants.
When Mike Ward mentioned Jérémy Gabriel in his shows, the teenager was a well-known singer, who had appeared alongside Celine Dion and the Pope at the Vatican.
This is not the first time that the Supreme Court has intervened in this matter, the highest court having ruled in favor of the comedian in 2021 and overturned previous decisions which had sentenced Mike Ward to pay $35,000 to the young man. In an extremely divided decision of five judges against four, the Supreme Court ruled that the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to render a judgment on the discrimination complaint filed by Mr. Gabriel, since he Rather, it was a case of defamation.
Second failure for the mother
Sylvie Gabriel had already suffered a first failure before the legal authorities. At the start of this long legal journey, initiated by a complaint in 2012 before the Commission on Human Rights and Youth Rights for discrimination, the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal sentenced Mike Ward in 2016 to pay 35,000 $ to Jérémy Gabriel and $7,000 to his mother, in moral and punitive damages.
The Court of Appeal then upheld the verdict and approved the payment of $35,000 to the young man, but canceled the damages that were to be paid to his mother.
The case went to the Supreme Court, pitting artistic expression, in the form of dark satirical comedy, against the protection of people’s dignity. The country’s highest court concluded that the singer and his mother had chosen the wrong forum – the Human Rights Tribunal – to bring their suit, since it was not a case of discrimination, under charters, but of defamation.
Like his mother, Jérémy Gabriel had also filed a defamation suit against Mike Ward in Superior Court, claiming damages of $288,000, but it had been suspended pending a decision in his mother’s case. However, he abandoned this appeal in May 2023.
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