Jérémy Gabriel affair | End of legal actions against Mike Ward

The appeal of Jérémy Gabriel’s mother against comedian Mike Ward was dismissed, the Supreme Court of Canada announced Thursday morning.

This decision puts an end to the legal saga between Mike Ward and Sylvie Gabriel.

The Quebec Court of Appeal had already dismissed Sylvie Gabriel in January 2024 by rejecting her request to sue Ward for defamation. She claimed $84,600 in compensation, she said, for the destructive effect of the jokes he made about her family between 2010 and 2013. Initially, Jérémy Gabriel was 13 years old and had become known in trying his luck in song.

Michel Grenier, Ward’s agent, indicated by telephone that his client had no statement to make.

In his show Mike Ward s’eXposethe comedian made fun of the handicap of Jérémy Gabriel, born prematurely and suffering from Treacher-Collins syndrome, during some 230 performances, the cause of his malformations and severe deafness.

Ward had notably declared that Gabriel’s illness was: “It’s letter! “, and that he had tried to drown him, but that he was “not killable”.

These declarations were reproduced in DVD format and in popular web capsules.

On -, in 2016, Jérémy Gabriel declared that an apology from the comedian would have been enough for him to avoid a legal battle. If he had withdrawn from prosecution over the years to move on to something else, his mother never gave up her battle.

Mike Ward and his lawyers have always advocated freedom of expression.

In 2023, Mike Ward, on the show Sweet Saltyat TVA, declared that this whole story had caused him “a lot of trouble. It ruined my life. I regret everything that happened,” saying he would think more about it in the future before attempting a joke about someone from a minority or with disabilities.