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Document the douchebagitude.
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Jason? Jason who?
Canada's Blogging Tories, who absolutely delight in pointing out the dishonesty, hypocrisy and shifting ethical standards of, well, everyone else, have nothing to say on the subject:
Pretend you're surprised.
P.S. In case you needed reminding:
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What a convenient interpretation.
Blogging Tory Hugh MacIntyre gets all pedantic and everything:
Government versus the Conservative Party
The headline of this story reads 'Tories apologize to India over visa feud.' Shouldn't it read 'government apologize to India over visa feud.' It isn't like the Conservative Party of Canada is making the apology. It is the government.
There is a fine line between the actions of a political party in government and the actions of the government. But when dealing directly with foreign powers it is very clear what side of the line it is on. Minister Kenney was speaking on behave [sic] of the government of Canada not the Conservative Party.
So why the misleading title? Is it to make it sound like this incident is somehow the Conservative's fault?
We now return you to your regular programming, where the Stephen Harper Party of Canada runs the country, and the entire Opposition are simply second-class citizens who can shut the fuck up.
P.S. Follow the link and make your own determination as to who exactly owes the apology. No, really, go ahead. Amuse yourself.
Oh, and pay close attention to this bit:
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney issued a statement Friday saying Canada works closely on security matters with India.
“The Government of Canada therefore deeply regrets the recent incident in which letters drafted by public service officials during routine visa refusals to Indian nationals cast false aspersions on the legitimacy of work carried out by Indian defence and security institutions, which operate under the framework of democratic processes and the rule of law,” Mr. Kenney said in the statement.
“This language, or the inaccurate impression it has created, in no way reflects the policy or position of the Government of Canada.”
At least he got that last part right. It wasn't the policy of position of the "Government of Canada" -- it was simple Conservative racism from beginning to end. With the unfuckable Jason Kenney's fingerprints all over it.
BY THE WAY, HUGH, if you want to get all pedantic like that, you might reserve your irritation for this sort of crap on the Government of Canada website:
PM builds stronger collaboration with Mexico
Really? The PM built a stronger collaboration with Mexico all by himself? That's just awesome. I would have thought the rest of the Government of Canada would have been involved as well. My bad.
BONUS TRACK: I could do this all day.
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You keep using that word "transparency" ...
Apparently, we have a new right-wing talking point:
Critics point out that Britain pegged its costs for hosting a one-day G20 meeting in London last year at $30-million – a relative pittance, but an amount some U.K. newspapers still decried as spendthrift.
How to account for the Canada-U.K. discrepancy? Bookkeeping, according to [security czar Ward] Elcock.
“You’re assuming, and I frankly don’t, that the public numbers out there are correct,” he said. “If you could actually compare apples to apples, the costs are going to be fairly comparable.
“We have been much more transparent about total costs. I don’t mean that other countries are hiding costs,” he cautioned, saying that other, unnamed governments’ accounting methods are “just different.”
Ah, so the only reason Canada seems to be spending 30 to 40 times as much is that, apparently, we're simply being more open, more transparent, more accountable about that budget, is that it?
In that case, one might reasonably ask where that transparency and accountability was back in March:
In March, Canada allocated C$179 million for security costs at the two summits. This week it shocked legislators by revealing the overall total would in fact be many hundreds of millions of dollars more.
Sorry, Ward, but you can't have it both ways. You can't brag about transparency and accountability now after you clearly hid the real numbers two months ago. It doesn't work that way.
Unless you live in Stephen Harper's world. Then, sadly, it always works that way.
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Being right about everything all of the time.
Oh, come on ... when everyone else was celebrating Speaker Peter Milliken's Parliamentary smackdown of the Cons over the Afghan detainees documents, I know I predicted something like this:
Opposition balks at Tory loophole in detainee records deal
Conservative proposal would allow exemptions for some documents
The Harper government has been trying to insert a loophole in a deal that’s supposed to grant opposition MPs full access to secret records on Afghan detainees – a proposal that could derail negotiations if not resolved.
Opposition parties are fighting the attempted exemption that would let Ottawa withhold some documents on the grounds they are “not necessary or appropriate for the purpose of holding Parliament to account."
Feel free to acknowledge my spectacular talent at prognostication any time.
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OK, that's just weird.
What the f...?
Now they're just stalking me.
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Hiatus! And thanks for all the fish.
Dr. Dawg has the right idea -- a month away from the blog. Of course, he has an actual excuse -- academic research.
Me? I'm just tired.
Now I could yammer on endlessly regarding my justification ... hey, why don't I do just that? In a nutshell, I'm tired not so much of blogging but what it's turned into. Used to be it represented some humour, some snark and -- most importantly -- actual, genuine intellectual discourse.
Well, those times are long gone, aren't they? Look around. If you're a Canadian progressive, who exactly are you going to exchange intellectual banter with? Hunter? Dodo? Kate McMillan? Neo Conservative? Ezra Levant? Kathy Shaidle? Sandy Crux? Dr. Jabba the Roy?
And even if you put in some legitimate civil effort (as a number of progressives have done), you know what's coming? "Harharhar, stupid leftards, it sure is easy to upset them, harharhar!" Followed immediately by the inevitable savage and brutal comment moderation and deletion. No intellectual discourse for those folks.
Quite simply, there's no middle ground to even attempt discourse any more. Canada's conservatives aren't just, well, conservative. No, they are, for the most part, screeching, scientifically illiterate bigots, racists and hypocrites. And after a while, simply mocking them gets tedious and repetitive. I mean, how long can I milk the theme of, "Hey, did you see the awesomely stupid thing that [insert random Blogging Tory name here] wrote today!?!?" You start to feel that you might as well just number code the jokes to save time. After all, I need only write "Molecules!" to inform everyone that Sandy Crux just posted something howlingly idiotic.
But, really, in the end, I just have other, more important things I want to do. It's been fun but, after well over 10,000 posts and over one and a quarter million visitors, there's other stuff I'd rather spend my time on -- books to read, technical tutorials to write, courseware to design, people to bounce some business ideas off of, seminars to give, conferences to attend, development kits on which to install Linux ... well, you get the idea. And when I think about it (and it doesn't take much thought), all of the above appeals to me way more than mocking Stephen Taylor for whatever asinine piece of offal he posted yesterday.
Will this stick? Who knows? Perhaps there's an up-and-coming blogger who wants to join the crew at CC HQ and poke stupid right-wingers with a sharp stick. If you're out there and this sounds like you, drop me a note and we'll see. But when I look around, I'm pretty sure the Canadian Progress-o-sphere is in good hands. And if there are any bloggy get-togethers, sure, I might crash it and socialize with my ideological buds.
But for now, at least, I've got a buttload of cool technical projects and people who want more of my time and, in the grand scheme of things, those cool technical projects have a lot more appeal than whatever douchebagitude Steve "The Premature eJankulator" Janke horked up recently.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some work to do for a high-tech European company and I feel like doing a good job of it. And that means starting today. Now.
Well, OK, after a glass of scotch. Then I'll start. And thanks for all the fish.
P.S. Molecules! You had to know that was coming.
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The Saga of Patrick Ross -- New House Rules
For reasons stemming from a fundamental difference in philosophy, the cripplingly hilarious "Saga of Patrick Ross" is going to be republished here one part at a time, with that fundamental difference in philosophy as follows.
Having put up with Patrick Ross' relentless defamation over the course of almost three years, while I'm going to leave the comments sections open for the entire series of posts, I absolutely will not tolerate trolls, idiots and sock puppets dropping by for the purpose of retrying my defamation lawsuit against him. Given that that case was tried and ruled overwhelmingly in my favour over a year ago, I have no patience for anyone who wants to re-argue its fundamental issues all over again.
I will particularly have zero tolerance for anyone who stupidly wants to repeat the same defamation that has one Patrick Ross in debt to me for currently well over $85,000 in judgment and court costs. If that's your plan, you're free to do that but you'll do it somewhere else.
Quite simply, after putting up with Patrick Ross' defamatory bullshit for month after month after libelous month, this is my turn to tell the story and I have no intention of letting utter dingbats hijack the discussion.
My blog. My rules. Deal with it.
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The Saga of Patrick Ross -- Part the First
CC here. Since I’ve tweeted mysteriously about this a number of times, I thought it was finally time to write the awesome — nay, definitive— history of my relationship with one Patrick (@OutlawTory) Ross. And I use the word “relationship” in its most unpleasant and pejorative sense. And since this is going to take a while, you might as well make yourself comfortable; we’re going to be here for a bit.
First, let’s get rid of the suspense — pop over here to set the stage. That part of this sordid epic has been public for a while; the fact that mullet-headed frat boi Patrick Ross maliciously defamed me over the course of many months to the point where the legal system finally gave him the spanking he had coming to him, and gave me an $85,000 judgment I had coming to me. None of that is any surprise anymore. But there’s so much more and I think it’s time everyone else knew the whole story, and I’m doing this for a couple reasons.
First, as hard as it might be to believe, we’re still looking for Patrick Ross. That’s right — even after he was properly and personally served with the aforementioned judgment in April of last year, he’s weirdly considered himself somehow above the law, so the hunt is still on. And I figured that, if I want to ask the general public for help, I really have to give it something in return. Hence, the story you’re about to read. But that’s not all.
Having put up with years of abuse from Patrick Ross, I figure it’s only fair that I take this opportunity to spank him savagely and thoroughly (metaphorically speaking, of course), and to reveal him for the cement-headed, self-absorbed dingbat he is. And this is going to take so long that I’ll be doing this in two (possibly three, maybe four, who knows?) parts. So settle in, cuz it’s going to be quite the ride. And when we’re done, you’re more than welcome to do me an $85,000 favour. And now, to business.
(Aside: Every so often, I’ll toss in one of these “asides”, for obvious reasons. The first aside is that I’m going to try to be as accurate as possible about timelines, but dates don’t need to be perfect — all that matters is the general order of events.)
It was after a couple years of blogging here at CC HQ that I first came to the attention of yappy, shrieking, spittle-flecked, overage frat boi and U of Alberta undergrad Patrick Ross, sometime around June of 2007. For an undergrad with an undeniably high opinion of himself, Patrick’s sniping was remarkably childish, and I satisfied myself with smacking him on the nose every so often, and moving on. And it wouldn’t have got any more exciting than that except for the day that "NAMBLA Dick" sauntered into town.
As near as I can tell, NAMBLA Dick (real name unimportant, nickname self-evident shortly) started in on me around August of 2007, and took great exception to me and everyone else at CC HQ. NAMBLA Dick was no wittier or well-read than any of Canada’s other useless, stenographic wankers at the time, but he distinguished himself by having a mean streak that inspired him to some astonishingly classless attacks.
After warming up with your typically sophomoric right-wing insults, NAMBLA Dick decided that it would be knee-slappingly hysterical to register a web site with a look-alike name to that of CC HQ, with the obvious design of hoping to trick the unsuspecting into visiting his site instead of the legitimate CC HQ. That’s tacky enough, of course, but NAMBLA Dick was just getting started.
What he did then was to redirect that URL to the home page of “NAMBLA” — the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Um, that would be a group that promotes men having sex with adolescent boys. Ha ha, that Dick, what a card! That is some funny shit, you bet. But Dick wasn’t done, oh no.
To truly finish things off, Dick arranged for the site to pop up a 15-second dialogue, claiming quite unambiguously that what the reader was about to see was what the proprietors of CC HQ wanted for Canada. In short, Dick was openly accusing all four of the bloggers at CC HQ of directly promoting pedophilia. To this day, no one knows from where in his fevered imagination Dick got this idea, but he clearly thought it was the height of entertainment, and he refused every entreaty to take it down, even from people who were typically supporters of his. Yes, Dick was that classless.
The cross-country pissing match (NAMBLA Dick lived with his wife and two children in Calgary, I was in Ontario) went on for months, with Dick making it crystal clear that that site was not coming down, and me slowly but inexorably running out of patience. No one understood what Dick’s point was, but it seemed like a bizarre thing to do for a rather obvious reason — Dick was running for Calgary City Council at the time, and it struck everyone that this really isn’t the kind of public exposure you want to hang around your neck when you’re trying to sweet-talk the electorate. But Dick cared not one whit — election or no election, he seemed determined to roll around in the mud of a website featuring men who wanted to get it on with adolescent boys, sodomistically speaking.
Now, as I said, I was slowly but surely running out of patience and, in a fit of pique, I did something I’ll admit didn’t represent my finest hour, but it happened. I decided that, if Dick was so keen on promoting NAMBLA’s web site, I could make him wear that sleaze in a very public way, and I suggested to my readership that, given that Dick had posted his family’s personal information on his political web site, it would be a trivial job to figure out, from simple geography, where his two children went to school, at which point one could simply drop a note to the entire staff there, pointing out Dick’s unseemly obsession with men and boys having sex.
Let me say that again to make sure we all understand my proposal. NAMBLA Dick had already posted his family information online, including his address in Calgary. Based on nothing more than that, I suggested it would not be difficult, based on only the layout of the school system, to deduce where Dick’s kids went to school, then embarrassing him massively to the teachers there. My logic was fairly obvious — if Dick thought promoting NAMBLA was such a nifty idea, he couldn’t possibly complain if I helped it along by giving him even more publicity. Simple, no?
Well, the shitstorm was entirely predictable. Despite the fact that I made it clear that my plan was based entirely on public information (most of which NAMBLA Dick had published himself, something he reluctantly admitted to much later), the shrieking was instantaneous — OMFG, CC’s endangering Dick’s kids, he’s telling people to stalk them, yap yap yap yap! The same wingnuts who thought sending unsuspecting readers to a site featuring man-on-boy butt sex was just fine were suddenly mortified by my proposal involving nothing more than public information and looking at a city map. If the hypocrisy was any thicker, you could have cut it with Ezra Levant's chainsaw. Yes, the hypocritical hysteria was something to behold. But wait, you ask, what does this have to do with Patrick Ross? A good question. But before I answer that, I must set the stage.
As anyone who’s ever dealt with Patrick Ross knows full well, he is the most dishonest debater imaginable. Patrick’s shtick is to argue in bad faith. By that, I mean that Patrick is never, ever, ever interested in an actual, honest exchange of ideas. Rather, Patrick’s M.O. is to hideously distort whatever you say or write, then attack the distortion. Patrick Ross has never been interested in discussion. Patrick Ross has only ever been interested in winning, and a couple examples will demonstrate that quite nicely.
Consider, if you will, the case of Andrew Meyer. As you can read, Meyer was the dumbass who was Tasered at the U of Florida for being an obnoxious, belligerent troublemaker who physically scuffled with security until they’d had enough and Tased his sorry ass. Given his behaviour, I and many others opined that, frankly, anyone that much of an idiot deserved to get a good Tasering, and I for one had no sympathy.
Patrick Ross’ rebuttal was as rapid as it was idiotic — “CC thinks people who disagree with John Kerry should be Tasered!!”
See what Patrick Ross did there? Totally stripped the context, and dumped on me for something not even remotely close to reality or what I’d written. And lest you think that was an isolated incident, let us continue.
There was also the case of anti-choice crusader Ed Snell. But Ed Snell was no ordinary shrieky fetus fetishist, oh no. As you can read here, Snell was a delightfully ambitious dingbat, who went to the trouble of building a car-top platform, from where he could continue to howl Scripturally at women even after they’d entered the grounds of an abortion clinic. Once again, a number of people (including myself) really couldn’t muster up any pity for Snell once someone lost it and booted Snell’s ass off the top of his car.
You know what’s coming, don’t you? Yes, you do: “CC encourages violent physical assault of senior citizens!!!!!”
See how Patrick works? To a miniscule grain of reality, Patrick Ross wraps multiple layers of exaggeration, distortion, misrepresentation and utter bullshit. This is what he does. This is how he argues. Invariably. Anyone who has dealt with him for any amount of time knows precisely of what I speak. And the brighter among you probably already know where this is going.
Patrick Ross decided that he wanted in on the NAMBLA Dick pissing match and, entirely predictably, my simple request for some geographical information was transmogrified by Patrick Ross into:
- Accusations that I was harassing Dick’s kids.
- Accusations that I was stalking Dick’s kids.
- Accusations that I was encouraging my readers to stalk Dick’s kids.
- Accusations that I was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to stalk Dick’s kids.
- Accusations that I was engaged in a scheme of criminal harassment against Dick and his family.
In one hilarious incident, Patrick literally accused me of stalking Dick’s children “to their school” (his exact words), despite the fact that a) to this day, I have no idea what school they attended, and b) I haven’t been to Calgary in over a decade. But you should now appreciate how Patrick operates, and this is important as it plays a critical role in what happens from this point on.
We can now fast-forward to that fateful day of June 15, 2009, when my bloggy anonymity was blown and I was outed, with NAMBLA Dick being one of the prime movers behind that effort. And there was much rejoicing and schadenfreuding in the Canadian Dumbass-o-sphere, and the totally predictable threats of personal assault and violence the Dumbass-o-sphere is famous for, and I gritted my teeth and sucked it up and continued blogging and everyone slowly but eventually drifted away and life returned to something resembling normal.
Except for Patrick Ross.
Because now that my name was out there, Patrick Ross decided this was what was going to make his rep and get him some dynamite, kick-ass street cred — to launch a full-out, 24/7 assault on me and my personal and professional reputation because, apparently, that’s what U of A frat bois think gets the chicks or something. And Patrick took on his new mission with great gusto.
For the next several months, Patrick Ross spared no pixels in blogging about me and using my full name on a daily basis. The smearing was relentless — I was a stalker, a child stalker, a criminal, involved in criminal harassment, I was a dangerous psychopath … well, you get the idea. No one’s quite sure what drove Patrick Ross, but on at least one occasion, he openly described himself as being on a “mission from God” to reveal to all of Canada the dangerous lunatic hiding in their midst.
On advice of co-bloggers, I tried to ignore him, but that simply drove him into an even greater frenzy. At times, he published three blog posts a day attacking me, leading more than one person to suggest that that boy just wasn’t right in the head. And I continued to ignore him … until that day.
That would be the day in early 2010 when, sensing weakness on my part, Patrick Ross flat out accused me of being a pedophile. Let me assure you I do not exaggerate — the phrase “balls deep in a two-year-old” featured prominently in his accusation. And it was at that point that I’d had enough, and hired me a lawyer.
To be continued ... Part Deux
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The Saga of Patrick Ross -- Part the Second
When last we saw Patrick Ross, the Wonder Mullet and U of A frat boi, his months-long campaign of virulent smear and defamation had finally culminated in his pulling out of his pock-marked, doughy ass an accusation that I was a pedophile. It was at that point that patience was no longer an option, whereupon I hired a lawyer and, in early February of 2010, I served Patrick Ross with the standard Notice of Libel. And herein lies the first of many lessons to mouthy, preening, self-absorbed, retarded wingnuts everywhere.
I did not, as wingnuts are wont to do, threaten to sue. I did not howl publicly, nor brag, nor bluster. I served. That’s because, unlike the vast majority of Canada’s dull-witted wankers, I actually took the time to figure out what the word “defamation” means — unlike the aforementioned wanks, who have an annoying habit of screeching idiocy like, “You called me a ‘yappy douchenozzle’! I’m suing!!!!!”
I did not do that; I did the grown-up thing in hiring an actual lawyer and paying him to draft said Notice of Libel which clearly described my grievance in detail, and demanding a public apology, whereupon said Notice of Libel was correctly and properly served on one U of Alberta undergrad and frat boi Patrick Ross in Edmonton. And this is where the entertainment truly began, because there’s nothing that spells “recipe for disaster” like a pompous, pretentious, beer-swilling, WWE-obsessed, twenty-something undergrad that decides he doesn’t need his own lawyer because he’s super-duper Inspector Gadget smart and has the Intertoobz and, besides, he’s seen every episode of “Law and Order” since the beginning so there.
That’s right — having been served with a real Notice of Libel, Patrick “Mullet the Wonder Doofus” Ross decided he didn’t need a lawyer. The mind reels. But it just gets funnier (as you knew it would).
At this point, most sane human beings would take a look at the unpleasant legal document that’s just been placed in their hands by a very serious process server, and would probably think, “Uh oh … this is not good and maybe I’ve taken this a bit too far and maybe I better walk it back.” Most sane human beings would do that.
Patrick Ross is, by all accounts, not a sane human being.
Patrick’s first response to said Notice was to (and I am not making this up) threaten my lawyer. You read that correctly — Patrick Ross concluded that, having been served, his first course of action was to screech and howl at the lawyer whose only offense was to do what I had hired him to do. This is what comes of deciding you’re too clever to need a lawyer. And then it got stupider. (By the way, the phrase “and then it got stupider” will come up on a regular basis so you might want to get used to it.)
Patrick Ross next decided that the proper course of action would be to demean the Notice publicly, whereupon he made the nad-grindingly inane decision to brag to anyone who would listen how this was just awesome and he couldn’t wait to take me on in a courtroom and personally cross-examine me on the stand and expose my perfidy to the world. Oh, and he actually made the promise that he would “make [my] big, bad lawyer cry.” Yes, Patrick Ross smirked in public that he was looking forward to the eventual legal smackdown.
And then it got stupider.
On top of all of the above, Patrick Ross then publicly bragged in someone else’s comments section that he had shown the Notice of Libel to a lawyer (apparently not one that he had hired), and that that lawyer had “laughed” at it.
Pause with me for a minute and let’s think about that last claim.
If you’re served with a Notice of Libel for calling someone a pedophile, because you’ve actually accused someone of being a pedophile, and you take that Notice to a lawyer, there are a number of possible responses. If there’s a case, the lawyer should advise you of that. If there’s not much of a case, the lawyer should advise you of that as well. What the lawyer probably shouldn’t do is laugh at the Notice. That sort of behaviour is what we’d normally call really, really fucking stupid legal advice. But it’s what Patrick Ross claims happened.
It’s hard to believe that any lawyer would give that kind of counsel, but it’s the story Patrick Ross was now telling, and it’s apparently what inspired him to behave like what I began to call “The Dumbest Defendant in the History of Defendantdom.” But I tarry. Onward.
Having responded to the February 2010 Notice of Libel with nothing but scorn, mockery, derision and intimidation (and more than a smattering of illiteracy and bad grammar), Patrick Ross left me with very little choice, at which point I instructed my lawyer to do the obvious thing and in April of 2010, Patrick Ross was served with a Statement of Claim listing his offenses and what I was suing for.
(Aside: Based on advice from my incomparably professional and diligent lawyer and to speed things up, I chose to sue under the Simplified Procedure in Rule 76 of the Rules of Civil Procedure. As it was explained to me, while this limited my claim of damages to $100,000, it typically got through the legal system way faster. Ergo, I made it so.)
At this point, a quick legal lesson, for which you'll thank me later. The first two pages of the Statement of Claim (henceforth “SoC”) spelled out painfully clearly what this was about and what would happen if Patrick Ross didn’t take it seriously, and I quote (final emphasis added):
TO THE DEFENDANT:
A LEGAL PROCEEDING HAS BEEN COMMENCED AGAINST YOU by the plaintiff. The claim made against you is set out in the following pages.
IF YOU WISH TO DEFEND THIS PROCEEDING, you or an Ontario lawyer acting for you must prepare a Statement of Defence in Form 18A prescribed by the Rules of Civil Procedure, serve it on the plaintiff’s lawyer or, where the plaintiff does not have a lawyer, serve it on the plaintiff, and file it, with proof of service, in this Court Office, WITHIN TWENTY DAYS after this Statement of Claim is served on you, if you are served in Ontario.
If you are served in another Province or territory of Canada or in the United States of America, the period for serving and filing your Statement of Defence is forty days. If you are served outside Canada and the United States of America, the period is sixty days.
Instead of serving and filing a Statement of Defence, you may serve and file a Notice of Intent to Defend in Form 18B prescribed by the Rules of Civil Procedure. This will entitle you to ten more days within which to serve and file your Statement of Defence.
IF YOU FAIL TO DEFEND THIS PROCEEDING, JUDGMENT MAY BE GIVEN AGAINST YOU IN YOUR ABSENCE AND WITHOUT FURTHER NOTICE TO YOU. IF YOU WISH TO DEFEND THIS PROCEEDING BUT ARE UNABLE TO PAY LEGAL FEES, LEGAL AID MAY BE AVAILABLE TO YOU BY CONTACTING A LOCAL LEGAL AID OFFICE.
Now let’s make sure you understand what’s happening there. In a nutshell, having been served in a different province, Patrick Ross now had a hard legal deadline of 40 days to respond and file a defense; otherwise, he risked being placed in default. And what “default” means is simply that he will no longer be allowed to participate in the ongoing legal proceedings, and we’ll be moving on without him.
(Let me explain that again because it’s important. Despite what astonishingly stupid and ill-informed commenters might try to tell you, having Patrick Ross placed in default in no way means I automatically win my case. I still have to make a case, I have to present it properly before a judge, and that judge will still absolutely rule on its merits. The only difference is that I will present my side unopposed. But I still have to present my side, and the judge will still have to rule. We will be returning to this critically important point for the sake of monumentally retarded people everywhere. But ... onward.)
Having served defendant Patrick Ross with a proper Statement of Claim, my lawyer and I sat back and waited for a proper and legal response within the mandated 40 days.
And then it got stupider.
Having yapped and bragged to everyone within earshot about how he couldn’t wait to kick my ass in court, Patrick Ross suddenly decided that discretion was the better part of jaw-dropping stupidity, and simply vanished. No response. No filing of defense. No nothing. The weeks went by. Eventually, two months went by and, being the impatient sort that I am, I was all for filing to put Patrick Ross in default.
“Patience,” counseled my inestimable lawyer, explaining that, depending on what happened down the road, it was in our best interests to be as accommodating and flexible as humanly possible. He made a convincing case — the legal system tends to look more favourably on those who play nice so, after more than two months, rather than file, my lawyer simply dropped a short e-mail to Patrick Ross, politely pointing out that he was past the 40-day deadline for filing a defense and when might we expect to see it?
And then it got stupider.
“Statement of Claim? What Statement of Claim?” That would be Patrick Ross, now professing total ignorance of a properly prepared and served Statement of Claim. To which my thoroughly professional lawyer replied that, OK, here it is again, and we’ll give you another month but we’re going to put a hard deadline on it, so you really need to get your shit together and take this seriously and we’ll be waiting.
You’ll never guess what happened next. Go ahead, guess. You’ll never guess.
Nothing.
That’s right. Nothing. Self-described legal whiz kid Patrick Ross, having chosen to represent himself, blew off the generous extension we’d given him and still didn’t file a defense, at which point on the day of the hard deadline we’d given him, we filed and put defendant Patrick Ross in default. Yes, the Patrick Ross who bragged for months about what sort of ass-kicking he was going to lay on me simply ... vanished.
And to tidy up Part Two, it remains only to explain that, having placed Patrick Ross in default, my lawyer applied for a court date, got one in short order, appeared, presented his case and got the $85,000 judgment referred to earlier.
And you’d think that was the end of the story. And you would be wrong. Because there will be a Part Three and, unsurprisingly, it gets stupider.
ADDENDUM -- SOME LEGAL STUFF: While I am not a lawyer, I believe I’m qualified to explain a couple things that some folks seem utterly unable to comprehend. The first involves what’s referred to as a “default judgment,” which is an unfortunate phrase since it actually involves two distinct events and processes.
Placing someone in default means nothing more than that they’ve failed to file a defense within the allotted time, at which point one is allowed to suggest they’re either too stupid or too lazy to take the legal system seriously. And placing them in default means only that they’re now not entitled to participate in further proceedings.
Placing someone in default says nothing whatsoever about the merits of the suit. It makes no judgment — it simply reflects one party’s lack of interest or effort in following the rules and doing what is required of them. Even after Patrick Ross was placed in default, my lawyer still had to file for a court date, show up and plead my case. And as you can read from the very brief summary of that case:
the judge absolutely found that I had been defamed, and maliciously at that. I was not handed that judgment out of the goodness of the Court’s heart — I won that judgment because I had been defamed. Period. Anyone who suggests otherwise is an idiot (hello, "Marky Mark"). But we’re not done here.
Let’s talk about “malice,” shall we? Because you’ll notice that the judge ruled that not only had Patrick Ross defamed me, but his behaviour was “clearly malicious,” so let’s make sure you understand the significance of that qualifier.
As I understand it, if you defame someone under Canadian law, you have a number of defenses. But if the defamation was malicious, most of those defenses disappear. If it can be shown that the defamation was explicit and deliberate, and that you knew the damage you were causing, you’re pretty well screwed in terms of a defense.
And that’s where Patrick Ross was massively obliging, in that on at least one occasion, he publicly bragged about how he knew how his constant blogging about me was polluting search engines and driving search requests about me to his site where readers would read his outrageous accusations. Quite simply, Patrick Ross made the hideously unwise decision to boast about how he knew what he was doing was ruining my personal and professional reputation. Yeah, that was a monstrously stupid thing to do, and he got his peepee whacked savagely in court for that. Not one of Patrick’s finer or more intelligent moments.
And one can even argue that, given the massive dossier we submitted detailing the overwhelming defamation, even if Patrick Ross had been in court, it’s not clear what he could possibly have presented as a defense. Once you’ve bragged online about how you’ve spent months wrecking someone’s reputation, you really don’t have a lot of wiggle room to walk it back.
Coming soon — Part Three, “And then it gets stupider.”
P.S. Just FYI, Patrick Ross’ strategy to ruin my reputation was to use my full name, the same way, over and over and over, repeatedly, to absolutely saturate online search engines and drive search requests to his site.
You might have noticed that I’m using his full name fairly frequently in these blog posts. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
BONUS HILARITY: I would be remiss in not pointing out that, less than a week before my lawyer appeared in court to plead my case, this happened. That’s right — when my lawyer appeared in that Ontario Superior Court of Justice courtroom, he had in his hand a precedent less than a week old from that same court, recognizing the significance of online defamation.
Which inspires me to write something you won’t read very often: Thank you, Ezra Levant.
WICKED COOL ADDENDUM: Anyone who wants a schooling in Canadian defamation law is encouraged to read that Vigna decision. In particular, paragraph [37] describes what must be true to claim a defence of “fair comment.” Amusingly, the very next paragraph reads:
Proof of actual malice will defeat the defence of fair comment.
Yeah, that’s kind of why, in my case, the judge’s finding that Patrick Ross acted with obvious malice really screws him every possible way.
Movin' on to Part 3. The things I do for you people.
↧
The Saga of Patrick Ross -- Part the Third
To recap from here and here, we are reminded of the crippling, self-destructive idiocy of one Patrick Ross who:
- made up defamatory crap about me
- bragged about making up defamatory crap about me explicitly to ruin my reputation
- published that defamatory crap for month after month
- laughed uproariously when served with a Notice of Libel
- boasted about how much he looked forward to the court case
- ignored both the original Statement of Claim, and the subsequent charitable extension we gave him to file a statement of defense
- never filed a defense after all, which handed to me an $85,000 judgment for malicious defamation
How we doing so far? Because, as hard as it might be to believe ...
… it just gets stupider.
(Aside: I had totally overlooked mentioning that one of Patrick Ross’ more boneheaded moves was to openly brag to my lawyer as to how he intended to drag out this entire process as long and painfully as possible, for the sole purpose of driving up my legal fees. I’m not sure that ever came up in court but, if it did, I’m betting it didn’t do Patrick any favours. Judges are kinda like that. Anyway, onward.)
So it was November 23, 2010, and me with my handy-dandy $85,000 judgment, and you’d think that that was pretty much the end of the story.
And you would be wrong.
Because it gets so much stupider.
Because now I had to collect, and that’s where things got complicated.
On the one hand, the fact that mine was a default judgment worked massively in my favour, given that Patrick Ross’ incapacitating imbecility allowed my studly lawyer to present my side in court unopposed. On the other hand, the fact that Patrick Ross hadn’t bothered to submit a defense and had never hired a lawyer and had apparently disappeared from view meant that I now had to track him down in order to start extracting chunks of flesh — something that had never occurred to me.
In any event, I had no legal obligation to jump on this immediately so I took a couple weeks to tidy up some projects, and on December 3, 2010, I officially retained a law firm in Calgary to effect the process of collection (given that I needed Alberta representation to take care of phase two). But it’s what happened in the meantime that was so enlightening.
Within hours of the November 23, 2010 announcement of my crushing legal victory over the forces of stupid, my thorough and savage legal ass-kicking of Patrick Ross was the talk of the Canadian bloggysphere; oh, yes, it was. There was much mirth, merriment and schadenfreuding from people who had put up with Patrick’s abuse for years, and who were now giggling themselves senseless over his delightful comeuppance. But that’s not the important part.
No, the important part is that, within a day, there’s no doubt that Patrick Ross knew about it as well. Despite the fact that he was not responding to e-mails or returning phone calls, there is no way that a narcissistic sociopath like Patrick Ross wouldn’t have noticed the spectacular spike in blog traffic as a result of the blog announcement sending people over to his cesspool of a blog to gloat over his totally self-inflicted misfortune. So file that away — there’s no way Patrick was unaware that his life had just turned into utter shash.
In any event, because it was a default judgment, it was necessary to serve it on Patrick for it to take effect, and this is where reality dealt yours truly a crushing blow. Patrick was nowhere to be found — a process server who went to his last known address was told he wasn’t there anymore. No Patrick. No replies to e-mails. No answers to phone calls. Passing strange behaviour for someone who had gloated about how much he’d looked forward to stomping me in court. Ah, well. The search was on.
At this point, we need to make a teeny digression and get all legalistic again. Bear with me — this is important and you’ll thank me for it later.
Under Canadian law, once you’re found in default and judgment is levied against you, well, you’re pretty much screwed. You can’t appeal. You have no normal legal recourse. It’s over, baby. Well, almost.
Your only option is to try to overturn the default, whose effect it is to simply let you back into the game. It’s not an appeal, and it’s not a discussion of the merits of the case. It’s simply a request that one be allowed to set aside the judgment and be allowed to go to court after all. That’s it. That’s the only chance you have. But there are three things that have to be true for any court to even begin to entertain a request like that:
- You need to have a good reason for having blown the deadline,
- Once you learn of the judgment, you must try to overturn it as speedily and expeditiously as possible, and
- You have to show that you have a defense that is at least not total rubbish.
I think you see Patrick’s problem here. First, he has no remotely believable excuse for missing the filing deadline. We’d been more than accommodating, and he’d pooched it. One could also argue that, even if he were allowed back into court, he couldn’t possibly justify his vicious and prolonged libel. Ah, but it was the second prong above that was going to be particularly problematic for poor Patrick.
Remember, there was absolutely no doubt that Patrick knew of the judgment within hours of it being posted. He could not possibly have missed all that cruel and taunting laughter from coast to coast to coast. Yet he did nothing. But wait ... it gets worse.
For the next three months, we searched in vain. And, once again, there is no doubt that Patrick knew we were looking for him, but he carefully kept his head down. And while he must have thought he was being devilishly clever, I think you can see the hole he was digging for himself. You can either keep running, or you can desperately try to overturn that gosh-darned default judgment. Sadly, you can’t do both.
Then came the day of Wednesday, March 30, 2011, and the infamous blog post that changed everything.
To be continued ... Part Four
↧
The Saga of Patrick Ross -- Part the Fourth
To truly appreciate what you're about to read here, you need to refresh from Part 3, at which point you need to totally, absolutely and intuitively understand the following MASSIVELY incompatible observations.
On the one hand, there is absolutely no doubt that fugitive defendant Patrick Ross knew, since November 23 of 2010, that he was the victim of a whopping big ($85,000 plus interest) default judgment for malicious defamation of your humble scribe, from which he spent the next three months dodging and weaving, despite being well aware we were hunting for him. Got that? Make sure you have that.
On the other hand (and here's the kicker), given that it was a default judgment, Patrick Ross' only hope was to file to overturn the judgment, for which I have already explained that the following two things have to be true:
- He must have a compelling excuse for not responding to the deadline for filing a defense, and
- After learning of the judgment, he must apply to have it overturned as speedily as practically possible.
I think you see Patrick's fundamental problem -- while running and hiding lets him (for the time being) escape financial accountability, it simply digs him deeper and deeper into the hole he's dug for himself in terms of ever being able to overturn the judgment. You can either keep running, or you can man up and try to fight the judgment. You can't do both. Are we clear on that? You have to be clear on that because it's the foundation for the jaw-dropping dumbassitude that's about to follow.
Now let's set the stage: From November of 2010 until late March of 2011, Patrick Ross was nowhere to be found. He didn't respond to phone calls, he didn't reply to e-mails, his blog had gone suspiciously dark due to an almost total lack of activity. In short, Patrick Ross had dropped off the radar screen almost completely, despite the fact that he knew full well we were looking for him, and why.
And then, out of nowhere, comes Patrick Ross' blog post of March 30, 2011, a post at Patrick's now defunct "Nexus of Assholery" blog that is so thigh-suckingly bizarre and detached from reality that I am going to post it as a series of screenshots because, if I simply reproduced the text, you'd *swear* I was making it up to make him look retarded.
Ready? And ... begin.
I'll wait while you pick your jaw up off the barroom floor.
It would be hard to properly mock the screeching stupidity of that opening. In the space of three short paragraphs, Patrick Ross openly admits that he's known about the judgment against him for quite some time. Bye bye, rationale for overturning default judgment. If there's a dumber and more self-destructive thing that Patrick could have written after being on the lam for over three months, I can't imagine what it could be. But patience ... we're just getting started. And it gets so much stupider.
Note how Patrick seems to dismiss his $85,000 legal debt to me as "a default judgement." Well, yes, it is, but where is Patrick going with this, and why does he think that's important? Behold:
Huh. Now isn't that something? According to Patrick, he did file a statement of defense. Sadly, because he chose to do this without the advice of someone competent who actually knew how to do it, he almost certainly tried to file a piece of utter crap that was properly rejected by the legal system, which kind of has really strict rules for what they're willing to read. But wait ... there's more hilarity.
Patrick's alleged filing date of Sept 15, 2010 was, in fact, the absolute drop-dead deadline we'd given him in that extension. In other words, having been given over three months to get something done, Patrick waited until the last possible day, then submitted something that was obviously garbage and was thrown back at him.
And then it gets stupider, as we move to the very next paragraph:
As God is my witness, I have no idea how to properly make fun of this. This would be Patrick, now boasting as to how frantically avoiding what he admits is a default judgment he's known about for quite some time is somehow magically going to work out in his favour. Truly, Patrick's is a dizzying intellect, and one can't wait to see how this is going to work out. Given Patrick's obvious incompetence, one suspects, not well.
Oh, dear ...
Weirdly, Patrick seems to believe that something I did after the judgment was handed down has some incredible and devastating legal value to whatever bizarre and tricky strategy he has up his sleeve. Apparently, Patrick is unaware that, um, this case is over. And he lost. But Patrick is not one to let reality interrupt the voices in his head, as he continues:
Wait ... what??? "... as I have waited patiently to have documentation of the judgement served on me, ..."
This is, of course, the same Patrick Ross who's known about the judgment for over three months, the judgment he's been hiding from and which he could have obtained a copy of with a single phone call or e-mail anytime he wanted. But having dodged service for three months, Patrick suddenly reappears and plays the victim card. I told you that if I didn't reproduce the screen shots, you wouldn't have believed it.
And while we're only halfway through that magnificent post of Patrick's, you know what's coming. Yes, you do.
To be continued ... Part Five
PATIENCE, CHILDREN: I put up with Patrick Ross' abuse for three years. You can wait a couple days for the whole story. Think of it as foreplay.
↧
The Saga of Patrick Ross -- Part the Fifth
While some people are apparently tugging on their thongs to get to the Twatsilicious denouement of this epic saga of dumbassitude, I will tell this story in my own time, in my own way, in my own clothes. Live with it, kids. And ... onward.
From back in Part 4 of the Twatsy Chronicles, you might remember the jaw-dropping, magical reappearance of Patrick, the Wonder Doofus, who -- after having been utterly incognito for over three months after my whopping $85,000 judgment against him for malicious defamation -- burst back onto the scene with a sad story of victimhood and, well, idiocy. At this point, despite the clear and unambiguous directions of the judgment, Patrick had neither:
- paid me a cent in judgment, nor
- taken down a single bit of all of that defamation.
As you can read, Patrick (probably unintentionally) admits he's known about the judgment since the beginning, but weirdly thinks having ignored it this whole time will work in his favour. He is about to learn a very ugly lesson.
Continuing on in Patrick's groundbreaking blog post:
OK, then, let's refresh, shall we?
Once you're found in default and judgment is granted, your only option is to file to have the judgment overturned, which does nothing but let you back in the game and allows you to present your side in the eventual court case. And you already know what the requirements are for that. And you already know that Patrick has already blown a hole in that possibility with his idiotic admission that he's known about (and ignored) the judgment all this time.. But you should know one more thing.
As explained by my inestimable Ottawa lawyer, if you're from out of province, you cannot file such a request remotely. For Patrick Ross to try that, either he or an Ontario lawyer must appear personally at the Ottawa courthouse. He has no other option.
So, in fact, whatever was in those documents, sending them electronically was a total waste of time as they would be rejected. And they were. This would, once again, be Patrick Ross trying to act as his own lawyer, and trying to save money, and pooching it entirely. But, hard to believe as it might be, it gets so much funnier:
So here's the problem. Once again, I draw your attention to Patrick Ross' only option, which is to file to overturn the judgment. Instead, he now makes sinister bleating noises about suing someone for "malicious prosecution." And if you're a lawyer, you probably just wet yourself. Because you can sue for malicious prosecution only if you were involved in a legal action, and you won. With no competent legal counsel, Patrick Ross is reduced to dragging possible (and nonsensical) legal actions out of his fevered and crippled intellect, then threatening unnamed parties with idiotic lawsuits.
And then it gets stupider:
And if you don't appreciate the incapacitating idiocy in that paragraph, let me explain it to you. Weirdly, Patrick Ross seems to believe that, well, I had my shot, and presented my case, and got my judgment, and good for me. And now he seems to think it's his turn where, after laying low for a few months, hatching his cunning plan, he gets his shot in front of the judge. He clearly has no concept that the case is over. Done. Finito. And he lost. And he's trivially destroyed the only real opportunity he had to salvage the situation. And yet ... and yet ... here's Patrick Ross, apparently with a plan so cunning, you could pin a tail on it and call it a "weasel." Good luck with that.
And then it gets stupider, so let's just dump the rest of Patrick's post out there for your edification:
Yes, that would be Patrick, putting lipstick on that pig of a post by:
- playing the victim,
- begging for money,
- hilariously throwing around the characterization of "bully" to describe others, and
- most bizarre of all, continuing to defame me by describing me as "malicious"
That's just adorable.
And then it gets stupider.
To be continued ... Part Six
P.S. I'm curious as to how Patrick Ross justified asking for donations to defend against "this malicious prosecution" without letting readers know that the case was over, and he'd lost. That strikes me as just a wee bit disingenuous.
ADDENDUM: It's worth pointing out that, for this entire time, Patrick Ross did nothing to minimize damages. Even before the Notice of Libel, relatively sane people were cautioning him that what he was writing wasn't just talking smack or boys being boys. No, they were pointing out that it was clearly libelous, but Patrick played the legal genius and pompously lectured everyone on how he understood the Criminal Code of Canada and he was perfectly safe.
After he was served with the Notice of Libel, Patrick mocked it.
After he was served with the Statement of Claim, Patrick ignored it and claimed he hadn't received it.
After he was charitably given an extension, Patrick blew it off and (apparently) waited until the very last day to file a defense that, by his own admission, was crap.
And, finally, after the judgment, Patrick made no effort whatsoever to abide by any of its legally-required directives.
And after months of that sort of boneheaded stupidity, Patrick Ross has the gall to show up again and paint himself as the hapless victim at the mercy of the big, bad CC bully. Yeah, that didn't work out too well, did it?
↧
↧
The Saga of Patrick Ross -- Part the Sixth: Denouement
[Scroll to bottom for Dec 23, 2012 (and more recent) update.]
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4.
Part 5.
At this point, I think it's time to make one big push and wrap this up with a huge, ugly, Patrick Ross-flavoured bow, at which point you'll be getting your homework assignment. And you knew that was coming, so don't look surprised.
I suspect a number of readers are wondering, why the hell has this been taking so long? After all, the inordinately brief summary of the judgment from back in November of 2010 seems pretty clear on what Patrick Ross is required to do, and how quickly he's required to do it:
![]()
And here's where the novel property of a default judgment comes in.
Make no mistake -- the fact that Patrick Ross was so incompetent as to be unable to file a simple Statement of Defence within the legally-mandated deadline worked out MASSIVELY in my favour, allowing me to present my side of the case unopposed (although one imagines that even if Patrick Ross had filed and been present in court, I'm thinking he would have had a hard time defending his actions). But a default judgment also has an obvious downside.
As explained to me, the legal requirements of a default judgment kick in only after the judgment has been personally served on the victim, uh, defendant. If Patrick Ross had had the sense God gave a urinal deodorizer disc and hired a lawyer, this wouldn't be an issue. But the fact that Patrick Ross was in default meant that I had to find him after I won my judgment and serve him personally with a copy of that judgment before it would be considered in effect.
So let's make a long story short -- due to some miscommunications and also due to some astonishingly retarded U of Alberta frat brothers, it was April 29 of 2011 before a process server was able to put a copy of said judgment in Patrick Ross' pudgy hands, at which point the 15-day clock finally started ticking on his legal obligations to, among other things, get rid of every trace of any reference to me from his rancid sewer pipe of a blog. But that April 2011 service carried with it another time-critical obligation, as you can see here:
![]()
That would be the ominous "FINANCIAL STATEMENT OF DEBTOR" reference, which required Patrick Ross to list, in agonizing detail, every one of his assets, again with a 15-day deadline. After all, I can't take everything he owns until I have an inventory of everything he owns. And that is one mother of a scary form, as you can see here.
In short, as of the April 29, 2011 personal service on Patrick Ross, he now had a hard, 15-day legal deadline to do two things:
You'll never guess what Patrick Ross did next. Go on, guess. You'll never guess.
Nothing.
That's right -- having been physically located and having had some very serious legal documents with very serious legal deadlines crammed into his sweaty, sausage-like hands, Patrick Ross ... ignored them. I am not making this up.
After more than 15 days had gone by with nothing from defendant Patrick "Kid Cash Thunderbolt Assholery Nexus" Ross, my Alberta lawyer sent him a polite but firm e-mail, reminding him that (and I paraphrase) we were through fucking around and it was time for Patrick Ross to take this seriously or very bad things were liable to happen.
The response to this reminder was the hilarious, "What? You didn't get my documents? But I sent them! Oh, noez, I'll send them again, I promises!" And that's the last we ever heard from Patrick Ross, which is where things stand today. We have no idea where Patrick Ross is to be found, but we're fairly confident that when he is found, he will be in a world of trouble for his contemptuous dismissal of both the properly-served judgment and the properly-served Financial Statement of Debtor.
Anyone who's been following this clusterfuck for a while is well aware that Patrick Ross has always fancied himself quite the brilliant legal intellect. And yet, it would be hard to imagine how anyone could screw things up more than Patrick Ross has.
Patrick Ross has dug himself one monstrously deep and dark hole, and when he's found, life will become very unpleasant for him in a hurry. And it didn't have to be this way.
Patrick Ross was given every opportunity to walk back his malicious defamation. Instead, what we got was a constant litany of "Blar har har, OMFG!!" cackling, insults, threats, intimidation, and some of the stupidest legal strategy in the history of mullet-headed douchebaggery. And while Patrick Ross might want to play the aggrieved victim, he knows that he has only himself to blame for the shitstorm that his life is about to turn into when we track him down.
And that's your homework assignment. I'll shortly be posting everything we know about U of Alberta student and frat idiot Patrick Ross, but feel free to get a jump on the crowd. Ask around. Put out feelers. Follow the overpowering stench of dumbassitude. Whatever it takes. And when Patrick Ross is finally dragged into a courtroom to explain his actions, I'm guessing it's going to turn out very badly for him, indeed.
But that's just a hunch.
ADDENDUM: If one pops by Patrick Ross' now-dormant, craptacular blog "Nexus of Assholery," one will find very few blog posts left defaming me, but that has nothing to do with the co-operation of Patrick Ross.
Armed with a copy of the judgment, my lawyer and I convinced Google and Blogger Support to remove some 200+ posts that clearly infringed on the judgment. We got rid of that crap, since Patrick Ross made it clear he wasn't going to do it himself.
Seriously, when Patrick Ross is finally located and dragged before a judge, he will learn just how shitty his life is going to become.
DEC 23, 2012 UPDATE: Just so no one invests any more time tracking down the fugitive defendant Patrick Ross for me, this is the resolution of Patrick Ross' years of malicious defamation and legal evasion. That's right -- the yammering loon who relentlessly and condescendingly lectured others on accountability and personal responsibility and law & order and his own dizzying intellect recently hied himself to a bankruptcy trustee in Saskatoon and demanded that the government bail him out of his self-inflicted financial humiliation.
There is a certain irony when someone who perpetually mocks socialism and government aid and handouts and entitlement proceeds to, when the chips are down, scurry for the taxpayer-funded protection of personal bankruptcy when their troubles are entirely of their own making. But if you're familiar with Patrick Ross, absolutely none of the above should surprise you.
At this point, Patrick Ross is welcome to his new lifestyle as a 31-YO, recently bankrupt, jobless university dropout living (literally, I am not joking) in his parents' basement in Lloydminster. I hope it works out for him. Most people have loftier ambitions.
AH, IRONY: In which malicious defamer, legal fugitive, twice-found in Civil Contempt of Court and recent bankrupt Patrick Ross lectures others on taking personal responsibility for how their life turned out. You can't make this stuff up.
EPIC SELF-AWARENESS FAIL: In a truly monumental display of lack of awareness, the 31-year-old, unemployed (and now almost certainly unemployable) recently-bankrupt, $85,000 legal judgment worth of convicted libeler and college dropout who now lives in his parents' basement in Lloydminster and spends hours a day shrieking manically at the pixels on his Cheetos-encrusted computer screen will now lecture others on how their online persona is affecting their future employment prospects.
Yeah, let's go with that.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4.
Part 5.
At this point, I think it's time to make one big push and wrap this up with a huge, ugly, Patrick Ross-flavoured bow, at which point you'll be getting your homework assignment. And you knew that was coming, so don't look surprised.
I suspect a number of readers are wondering, why the hell has this been taking so long? After all, the inordinately brief summary of the judgment from back in November of 2010 seems pretty clear on what Patrick Ross is required to do, and how quickly he's required to do it:
And here's where the novel property of a default judgment comes in.
Make no mistake -- the fact that Patrick Ross was so incompetent as to be unable to file a simple Statement of Defence within the legally-mandated deadline worked out MASSIVELY in my favour, allowing me to present my side of the case unopposed (although one imagines that even if Patrick Ross had filed and been present in court, I'm thinking he would have had a hard time defending his actions). But a default judgment also has an obvious downside.
As explained to me, the legal requirements of a default judgment kick in only after the judgment has been personally served on the victim, uh, defendant. If Patrick Ross had had the sense God gave a urinal deodorizer disc and hired a lawyer, this wouldn't be an issue. But the fact that Patrick Ross was in default meant that I had to find him after I won my judgment and serve him personally with a copy of that judgment before it would be considered in effect.
So let's make a long story short -- due to some miscommunications and also due to some astonishingly retarded U of Alberta frat brothers, it was April 29 of 2011 before a process server was able to put a copy of said judgment in Patrick Ross' pudgy hands, at which point the 15-day clock finally started ticking on his legal obligations to, among other things, get rid of every trace of any reference to me from his rancid sewer pipe of a blog. But that April 2011 service carried with it another time-critical obligation, as you can see here:
That would be the ominous "FINANCIAL STATEMENT OF DEBTOR" reference, which required Patrick Ross to list, in agonizing detail, every one of his assets, again with a 15-day deadline. After all, I can't take everything he owns until I have an inventory of everything he owns. And that is one mother of a scary form, as you can see here.
In short, as of the April 29, 2011 personal service on Patrick Ross, he now had a hard, 15-day legal deadline to do two things:
- Remove a couple hundred posts from his so appropriately named blog "Nexus of Assholery", and
- Submit an "under oath" list of every one of his earthly assets.
You'll never guess what Patrick Ross did next. Go on, guess. You'll never guess.
Nothing.
That's right -- having been physically located and having had some very serious legal documents with very serious legal deadlines crammed into his sweaty, sausage-like hands, Patrick Ross ... ignored them. I am not making this up.
After more than 15 days had gone by with nothing from defendant Patrick "Kid Cash Thunderbolt Assholery Nexus" Ross, my Alberta lawyer sent him a polite but firm e-mail, reminding him that (and I paraphrase) we were through fucking around and it was time for Patrick Ross to take this seriously or very bad things were liable to happen.
The response to this reminder was the hilarious, "What? You didn't get my documents? But I sent them! Oh, noez, I'll send them again, I promises!" And that's the last we ever heard from Patrick Ross, which is where things stand today. We have no idea where Patrick Ross is to be found, but we're fairly confident that when he is found, he will be in a world of trouble for his contemptuous dismissal of both the properly-served judgment and the properly-served Financial Statement of Debtor.
Anyone who's been following this clusterfuck for a while is well aware that Patrick Ross has always fancied himself quite the brilliant legal intellect. And yet, it would be hard to imagine how anyone could screw things up more than Patrick Ross has.
Patrick Ross has dug himself one monstrously deep and dark hole, and when he's found, life will become very unpleasant for him in a hurry. And it didn't have to be this way.
Patrick Ross was given every opportunity to walk back his malicious defamation. Instead, what we got was a constant litany of "Blar har har, OMFG!!" cackling, insults, threats, intimidation, and some of the stupidest legal strategy in the history of mullet-headed douchebaggery. And while Patrick Ross might want to play the aggrieved victim, he knows that he has only himself to blame for the shitstorm that his life is about to turn into when we track him down.
And that's your homework assignment. I'll shortly be posting everything we know about U of Alberta student and frat idiot Patrick Ross, but feel free to get a jump on the crowd. Ask around. Put out feelers. Follow the overpowering stench of dumbassitude. Whatever it takes. And when Patrick Ross is finally dragged into a courtroom to explain his actions, I'm guessing it's going to turn out very badly for him, indeed.
But that's just a hunch.
ADDENDUM: If one pops by Patrick Ross' now-dormant, craptacular blog "Nexus of Assholery," one will find very few blog posts left defaming me, but that has nothing to do with the co-operation of Patrick Ross.
Armed with a copy of the judgment, my lawyer and I convinced Google and Blogger Support to remove some 200+ posts that clearly infringed on the judgment. We got rid of that crap, since Patrick Ross made it clear he wasn't going to do it himself.
Seriously, when Patrick Ross is finally located and dragged before a judge, he will learn just how shitty his life is going to become.
DEC 23, 2012 UPDATE: Just so no one invests any more time tracking down the fugitive defendant Patrick Ross for me, this is the resolution of Patrick Ross' years of malicious defamation and legal evasion. That's right -- the yammering loon who relentlessly and condescendingly lectured others on accountability and personal responsibility and law & order and his own dizzying intellect recently hied himself to a bankruptcy trustee in Saskatoon and demanded that the government bail him out of his self-inflicted financial humiliation.
There is a certain irony when someone who perpetually mocks socialism and government aid and handouts and entitlement proceeds to, when the chips are down, scurry for the taxpayer-funded protection of personal bankruptcy when their troubles are entirely of their own making. But if you're familiar with Patrick Ross, absolutely none of the above should surprise you.
At this point, Patrick Ross is welcome to his new lifestyle as a 31-YO, recently bankrupt, jobless university dropout living (literally, I am not joking) in his parents' basement in Lloydminster. I hope it works out for him. Most people have loftier ambitions.
AH, IRONY: In which malicious defamer, legal fugitive, twice-found in Civil Contempt of Court and recent bankrupt Patrick Ross lectures others on taking personal responsibility for how their life turned out. You can't make this stuff up.
EPIC SELF-AWARENESS FAIL: In a truly monumental display of lack of awareness, the 31-year-old, unemployed (and now almost certainly unemployable) recently-bankrupt, $85,000 legal judgment worth of convicted libeler and college dropout who now lives in his parents' basement in Lloydminster and spends hours a day shrieking manically at the pixels on his Cheetos-encrusted computer screen will now lecture others on how their online persona is affecting their future employment prospects.
Yeah, let's go with that.
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Where's Twatsy? Tracking the elusive Patrick Rossosaurus.
If you've followed the six-part series, The Saga of Patrick Ross (A study in Pathological Douchebagitude), then it's time for you to show your appreciation for all that pants-peeing entertainment value by helping me, my lawyers and children and small animals everywhere to locate and spank Mr. Ross to the extent that the legal system will allow:
So here's what we know about Patrick Ross. First, this would be what we in the biz jovially refer to as "The Twatster" or "Twatsy" for short:
(I'm guessing the fetching creature draped all over him would be his date, which should be a warning to you youngsters everywhere of the danger of "roofies".)
This is a list of everything we're pretty sure we know about Patrick Ross:
- E-mail address: ddp316@hotmail.com
- Phone number: 306-821-7328
- Last known address: 10942 87th Ave, Edmonton, AB
- Old Twitter account: NoAPatrickRoss
- Current Twitter account: OutlawTory (ah, the unintentional irony)
- Old blog: http://nexusofassholery.blogspot.com
- New blog: http://badcompanycanada.blogspot.com (more of that irony)
- Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/people/Patrick-Ross/508906366
In addition, Patrick Ross appears to be a regular contributor of right-wing ravings to a couple of useless online rags:
- http://propagandistmag.com/patrick-ross
- http://www.examiner.com/edmonton-conservative-in-calgary/patrick-ross
Finally, rumour has it that Patrick Ross is still a regular around the University of Alberta where he hangs out with campus conservatives and brags to cute undergrad chicks about his replica WWE championship belt and set of Edmonton Oilers collectable beer mugs.
)
What we're after is a reliable and verified address/location for Patrick Ross, so we can politely gift him with one more legal document, after which his running days are over. So drop any hints in the comments section, and me and my crack legal team of top men will take it from there.
UPPITY DATE: Oh, dear:
Twitmeister should really ask Patrick "Outlaw Tory" Ross whether Ross thinks his last 12 months have been "well played."
P.S. Just so you know ...
P.P.S. Here's the aforementioned Patrick Ross, doing his screen test for the part of a bookstore clerk while choking back the depression of knowing he owes me over $85,000 (his eminence bursts onto the screen at around 1:08):
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One man's defamation is another man's yappy douchebagitude.
One of my great regrets in life is that this action was never filed. I believe we are all the poorer for it.
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Of rocks, and the slimy things hiding underneath -- the Patrick Ross saga.
Back here, Rev. Paperboy asks:
What sort of fun and games are going to ensue (no pun intended) when the proper rock is lifted and Patsy scuttles out into the daylight?
I am not a lawyer and I would prefer not to speculate so I'll recap and let others with the appropriate legal beagle expertise weigh in. What follows are the simple facts.
On, November 23, 2010, defendant and U of Alberta student Patrick Ross, having weirdly chosen to not defend himself against a properly-served Statement of Claim, was found guilty in an Ontario court not merely of defamation, but of "clearly malicious" defamation:
(This default judgment was apparently
(Aside: Thanks to commenter Holly Stick for pointing out the typo above, and for the link to an explanation.)
As one can read, in addition to the whopping $85,000 (and accumulating) penalty levied against him, Patrick Ross was ordered to, within 15 days, remove all posts that "in any way" referred to me from his blog, the appropriately-named "Nexus of Assholery." Even though Patrick Ross was clearly aware of the judgment within hours of its posting that day, he did nothing.
After months of being elusive, Patrick Ross was finally located and personally served with a copy of the judgment on April 29, 2011:
which meant that, as I understand it, the 15-day deadline for Patrick Ross to take action finally started. But that's not all.
As you can see from that affidavit, malicious defamer Patrick Ross was simultaneously served with a Financial Statement of Debtor form, which requires him to list in agonizing detail his financial assets and liabilities. Conveniently, that form also has a hard, legal 15-day deadline to be filled and returned, implying of course that Patrick Ross had until mid-May of last year to both a) cleanse his blog of all posts referring to me in any way, and b) return an accurate and complete Statement of Debtor form to my lawyer in Alberta.
As of today, Jan 6, 2012 (some eight months later), malicious defamer Patrick Ross has done absolutely nothing in the way of fulfilling his legal obligations (even after proper and legal service). He has paid me nothing, and never removed a single one of the 200+ blog posts that were covered under the order of the judgment. (After being more than patient, I approached Blogger Support with a copy of the judgment and worked with them to remove all infringing posts. Those posts are now gone, no thanks to Patrick Ross.)
In addition, malicious defamer Patrick Ross has never filled in and returned the legally-required Financial Statement of Debtor form to my Alberta lawyer, despite having promised by e-mail to do so.
In short, despite having been personally and properly served in April of last year with both the judgment itself and the Statement of Debtor form (both of which had clearly-marked, 15-day legal deadlines), malicious defamer Patrick Ross has done nothing and, to this day, remains in hiding and refuses to reply to phone calls and e-mails from my lawyer. (At this point, I would normally make a joke about "Law and Order" conservatives always lecturing us about "accountability" and "personal responsibility" but I suspect that would just be cruel.)
Given the situation as I have described it, armchair lawyers are now free to speculate.
P.S. To answer a couple earlier questions, no, I am not returning to blogging. The only purpose of these recent posts is to try to bring the Patrick Ross issue to a close. Once he's located and dragged before a judge, I will finish things off with a report on how it went, and there will be single malt scotch for everyone, and that will be it.
And if you want to know how it ends, feel free to help locate Patrick Ross and turn him in so that it ends just a little bit sooner. :-)
P.P.S. Given how much effort Patrick Ross put into defaming and libeling me online and sullying my reputation, it would seem that turnabout is slowly becoming fair play.
P.P.P.S. I leave as an exercise for the reader to identify the pants-crapping irony here.
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The creepy eliminationism of Suzanne Fortin.
NOTE: You might want to check back on a regular basis for updates since this story is just getting more entertaining. Updates will be added at the bottom.
While I still have no intention of returning to blogging on any sort of regular basis, a recent blog post of Ottawa's most prominent fetus fetishist Suzanne Fortin can't go unspanked, not only for its jaw-dropping intellectual lunacy and murderous overtones, but its hypocrisy and downright dishonesty. And while most of the commenters there seem to be giving Suzanne the drubbing she deserves, I think they're missing a couple points that deserve a little more evisceration. And so, to work.
OH, DEAR: As commenter Fern predicted, Suzanne Fortin is such a dishonest hack, she redirected the link to her post to fetal porn -- you know, the horrific, bloody images that one suspects she masturbates to on a regular basis. So here's a screenshot of the text in question:
If you want to visit, copy and paste http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2012/01/pro-life-nation-launches.html into your browser.
First, let's reproduce the passage in question that's causing so much consternation:
Pro-life Nation's first project is the launching of a groundbreaking web site AbortionDocs.org. This site is a searchable database that endeavors to list every surgical abortion clinic, every "abortion pill-only" clinic, and every abortionist in the United States. The website boasts that it contains the largest collection of documents ever compiled on the abortion cartel-and is growing daily.
Documents include photos, medical license applications, malpractice suits, disciplinary records, news articles, videos, criminal histories, and more.
Now while Suzanne didn't personally write that passage, I think we can safely conclude she agrees with it whole-heartedly; otherwise, why the unconditional promotion? In any event, I think it's perfectly fair to suggest that we can thrash Suzanne soundly based on those words. And where to start?
To save time, let's all just agree that the suggestion she's making is utterly, totally and completely batshit fucking deranged. Given the historic (and, some would say, ironic) violence of the "pro-life" movement, it takes an astonishing level of intellectual damage to suggest that one could openly document all sorts of personal information about abortion providers without seeing the potential disaster therein. If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, then you're simply too stupid to be taking part in this discussion. But that's not why I'm here. Oh, no, there's more.
First, note carefully how desperately Suzanne tries to move the goalposts when she's called on her obvious genocidal obsession. Suzanne is adamant that she wants to document only those abortion providers that are criminals or who have "shady" behaviours, writing at one point in the comments section:
There are no "wanted" posters. It's a database of information for women who might want to abort. You know, because we tell them about shady abortionists when you won't.
Suzanne makes the same claim several more times -- that she's only interested in smoking out the "bad" abortionists -- the shady ones, the criminals, the drug addicts and so on. That is, of course, a total lie since one can clearly read in the original passage (emphasis tail-waggingly added):
This site is a searchable database that endeavors to list every surgical abortion clinic, every "abortion pill-only" clinic, and every abortionist in the United States.
So Suzanne's frantic attempt to deflect falls MASSIVELY flat, and that's her first lie. But that's not why I'm here. No, I have a personal dog in this fight.
Suzanne's other pathetic rationalization is that simply listing publicly everything one can learn about abortion providers in no way endangers them, no sirree, they just want to, um, "shame" them, yeah, that's the ticket. And if they're lawbreakers, sure, that's a bonus, but Suzanne insists that a MASSIVE public database of abortion docs and everything one can glean about them (including their photos) doesn't represent any sort of risk to them. In Suzanne's own words, "This is not violent." This is an interesting defense since it contradicts completely how Suzanne felt just a couple years ago.
At the risk of over-summarizing, long-time readers might recall my public spat with one "NAMBLA Dick", during which -- after NAMBLA Dick had created a web site whose sole purpose it was to push unsuspecting readers to the home page of NAMBLA, an organization that promoted pedophilia -- I suggested that one response would be to figure out where Dick's children went to school in order to warn the teachers and administrators there that one of their parents had a truly creepy obsession with men having sex with children.
No, it wasn't one of my finer moments, but here's the curious thing -- by simply making that suggestion, I was hysterically accused of putting Dick's kids in terrible and mortal danger. Really? In what way? I'd suggested that, based on nothing more than Dick's public home address, it would be geographically trivial to deduce where the neighbourhood school was, nothing more. And in the end, that idea simply faded away and nothing was ever done with it. To this day, I have no idea which school that was and I have no interest in ever finding out.
And yet ... and yet ... from one of Suzanne's own posts from a couple years back (no link since she'd just redirect it to more gratuitous fetal pornography), we have this gem:
The lowest tactic was when Cynic revealed information about Richard Evans' kids and where they went to school, exposing them to possible danger.
Well, isn't that special?
Let's first notice that Suzanne is once again lying outrageously (something she claims as a Christian never to do). There was no "revealing" of school information at any time, either by me or anyone else. It's a lie.
Ah, but that's not the best part of the above, and I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. Apparently, Suzanne believed that just by publishing a school location, I was exposing someone to "possible danger." That's fascinating since she seems to have reversed herself entirely since then, claiming now that posting everything one can determine about someone couldn't possibly end badly. Hypocrisy, thy name is Suzanne. But there's one more point that can be made.
Frankly, I think this whole thing is overblown. I doubt Suzanne is actually going to do anything like this since, even though she's clearly mentally disturbed, she probably still has the awareness to realize what sort of shitstorm she'd be walking into, legally.
Note how Suzanne writes:
We should do this in Canada...
As in, she thinks it's a terrific idea but one gets the impression she's more than happy to let someone else do the work. And that's a good idea, Suzanne, because here's the thing.
People get a bit touchy when you publicly accuse them of being "shady" or "criminals," and you've made it clear that's what you have in mind. But if you want to make those kinds of accusations, you better make sure you can back them up, because that sort of accusation is -- what's the word I'm after? oh, right -- "libelous." And you'll have to trust me on this -- publicly accusing someone of criminal behaviour on the Intertoobz has the potential for ending very badly.
So I'm guessing that while Suzanne would really, really like a public database of Canadian abortion docs, she's actually not going to do anything about it herself. Because I doubt there's enough money on the planet to cover the legal fees she'd need to pay if she tried.
In the end, though, one can just be amused by Suzanne's jaw-dropping hypocrisy and double standards, where publishing openly public information about someone represents "possible danger." Except when it doesn't.
P.S. I feel horrifically sorry for Suzanne's children. They're going to need a lifetime of therapy to cope with the psychological damage. Or they'll just go to work for Sun TV. No one will even notice.
AFTERSNARK 1: Suzanne has incredible difficulty keeping her story straight. After insisting she wants only to document the "bad" abortionists, she writes the following in her own comments section:
And suddenly, we're back to what Suzanne really wants -- a database of all abortion providers. It's actually sad that Suzanne can't keep track of her own dishonesty.
AFTERSNARK 2: Gosh, how did I miss this bit of hypocrisy from Suzanne:
Wow. So "There is no such thing as a right to privacy," except there was a couple years ago when simply talking about where someone went to school was "exposing them to possible danger." Suzanne really needs to decide if she's going to take the red pill or the blue pill. She'll still be a total crackpot, but at least she'll be a consistent one.
AFTERSNARK 3: Well, let's score one for Suzanne as she gets something right which has no value whatsoever. Here's a recent altercation over at Suzie Fetus':
And did I publish the names of Dick's kids, Courtney and Tyler? Why, yes ... yes, I did, because it was publicly available information on Dick's political web site when Dick was running for Calgary city council in Ward 4. I did not reveal anything; I simply reproduced what Dick had already put up on his web page for all to see, and Dick himself was nice enough to admit this in my comments section back in March of 2008, and I quote:
Well, isn't that special? Even Dick admits that I did nothing wrong, and yet Suzanne continues to tearfully clutch her pearls over something that represents no invasion of privacy whatever, even as she lectures everyone that we have no such right to privacy.
Suzanne should really figure out which argument she wants to defend, given how she bounces around all over the map. And she's still a lying sack of crap. If she thinks the name of a school was ever published by me or anyone else at my blog, she should provide a link. Or she should shut the fuck up and take down that accusation because that claim is still defamation and I'm rapidly running out of patience with liars.
P.S. Make sure you appreciate what sort of vile and reprehensible hypocrite and liar Suzanne Fortin is. On the one hand, she sees absolutely nothing even slightly unethical about publishing "photos, medical license applications, malpractice suits, disciplinary records, news articles, videos, criminal histories, and more" for abortion doctors, knowing full well the perpetual violence against such people because she claims there is no such thing as a right to privacy.
And yet, she gets her placenta in a knot over my printing two names that were openly and unabashedly published by the aforementioned Dick, who even admitted in public on my web site that he had "no problem" with that. So, Suzie, who's being the disgusting hypocrite here? I'm just asking.
AFTERSNARK 4: And it just gets better:
Oh, my ... Suzie Fetusfest appears to put a great deal of stock in manning up and admitting when one's made a mistake. One wonders when she's going to walk that road herself with this blatant lie about me:
As anyone who followed that ugliness knows by now, I did not "reveal" anything, and no school name was ever published, for the simple reason that I have no idea which school they attended, and I never did. In short, Suzanne Fortin is lying.
And I'm going to guess that Suzanne is going to correct the record never, since Suzanne is an astonishingly sanctimonious scold when it comes to others, but she lies freely when it suits her purposes. She really is a spectacularly dishonest hypocrite.
AFTERSNARK 5: Yeah, she went there:
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The beginning of the end for Patrick Ross.
To truly appreciate what's about to go down here, you need to spend a few minutes reading the multi-part leadup to this in the earlier posts on this blog. So just kick back, crack open a cold one, and bring yourself up to speed, because you really need that background for what's about to happen, and there will be homework when this is over. Yes, you're going to work for your entertainment value.
- Part the First
- Part the Second
- Part the Third
- Part the Fourth
- Part the Fifth
- Part the Sixth
- Tracking the elusive Rossosaurus
- The Patrick Ross saga, in a (wing)nutshell
Time passes ...
Disclaimer: I'm going to repeat as faithfully as possible what my Alberta lawyer told me but, in some places, I'll just speculate as to what things mean and people who know more about the legal system in Alberta are welcome to leave comments filling in the blanks. And now, to business.
As you now understand, one Patrick Ross of both Lloydminster and Edmonton currently owes me well over $85,000 for having maliciously defamed me online, and also for being too stupid and arrogant to even attempt to defend himself in court against a properly served Statement of Claim. You rarely see that level of dumbassitude, so appreciate the opportunity.
In any event, as you should have read, Patrick Ross has, for the last several months -- even after being personally served with a default judgment against him and a demand to turn in a completed Statement of Debtor Form listing his assets -- been dodging and weaving from his legal obligations, to the point where he recently actually started bragging online about how clever he is at having outwitted the legal system (as well as your humble scribe).
That was a mistake.
For someone who constantly presented himself as a super-duper, crack legal wizard, Patrick Ross never seemed to understand that this was seriously grown-up stuff he was screwing with, and that I had hired seriously grown-up people to handle it for me. Patrick's legal advice, on the other hand, appeared to come from the frat bois he watched Oilers games and professional wresting with. But that's neither here nor there.
What's important is that I have patiently bided my time to let Patrick Ross dig himself the deepest hole imaginable. And now I'm going to bury him in it, but not before taking his stuff first. Possibly all of it.
Behold, I give you: the smackdown.
I will make a long story short -- the court has had quite enough of Patrick Ross' smirking arrogance and contemptuous disdain and would appreciate it if he showed up in court to explain himself. And, oh, he can bring that completed Statement of Debtor Form with him while he's at it.
You will notice that the first date listed is March 6, at which point it would really be in Patrick Ross' best interests for him (or whatever lawyer he manages to sweet talk into representing him) to show up in Calgary at the appointed time and place. (Remember the date of March 6 -- you'll need it later.)
And here's where I have to speculate just a bit.
There are a number of possibilities for what might happen on March 6. The first is that Patrick Ross takes a day off and, at his own expense, drags his flabby ass from Edmonton down to Calgary, at which point I am told that a judge will be more than happy to have a chat with him. And it will not be a pleasant chat for Patrick.
As I understand it, this will not be a two-way dialogue. Oh, no, it will be very much unidirectional, where the judge will talk and Patrick Ross will listen. And if Patrick tries to interrupt, he will be told in no uncertain terms that no one gives a shit what he thinks. In any case, if Patrick shows up, it will be more than a little unpleasant for him.
The second option is that Patrick has the brains God gave a urinal deodorizer disc and (finally) gets himself a lawyer to represent him. This will save him the trouble of having to appear in person, but the end result won't be a whole lot different. His lawyer will be told in plain language just how fucked Patrick is and, by the way, where's that Statement of Debtor Form? In both of these cases, Patrick is now going to be on a tight, court-ordered schedule. And the third option?
Oh, dear.
Given Patrick Ross' history, it would surprise no one if he didn't take this substitutional service seriously and blew off his requested court appearance for an evening sucking back beers with his frat buddies. And here's how I believe that would play out. (I'm willing to be corrected -- that's what the comments section is for.)
If my lawyer shows up in court on March 6, and there is no sniff of Patrick Ross or a corresponding lawyer, we will file to hold him in contempt of court. And depending on how things play out, if Patrick Ross continues to not take this seriously, well, the phrase "warrant for his arrest" came up in the conversation with my lawyer earlier today. At which point, being arrested would probably curtail a bucketload of career opportunities for boy lawyer Patrick Ross. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Getting back to the service, the next magic date is March 6, at which point it would be spectacularly unwise of Patrick Ross to make no appearance whatever in Calgary. And if he doesn't, we'll be going after that contempt of court charge. But to guarantee that application, we'll probably have to serve him personally, and that's where you, my adoring fans, come in.
I want to know where Patrick Ross lives, and I want to know by March 6, when my lawyer shows up in court.
Knowing where to lay actual hands on defendant Patrick Ross will make serving him with contempt of court charges a trivial no-brainer, so that's your first homework task -- bring me the meatspace co-ordinates of yammering wingnut and defendant Patrick Ross. But wait -- there's more.
We want to make sure that Patrick Ross can't possibly claim that he's unaware of what's happening, so in addition to the recently-granted substitutional service, I am going to crowdsource notifying him of it. That's right, I would like as many people as possible to casually drop Patrick Ross a note, or e-mail, or tweet, or Facebook message, and leave a link to this blog post, to the point where he can barely move under the weight of people laughing at him and pointing him to this post.
When March 6 comes and my lawyer appears in a Calgary courtroom, I want him to be able to say that no human being alive could have missed the coast-to-coast ridicule of Patrick Ross, based on how many folks gleefully pointed out to him how thoroughly fucked he is. And here are your options:
- Email him at his well-known email address, ddp316@hotmail.com
- Drop him a tweet at his (new and) gloriously appropriate Twitter handle, "@OutlawTory"
- Hop over to his (new) blog, http://badcompanycanada.blogspot.com, and leave a comment for him
- Write on the wall of his Facebook page
Yes, the possibilities are (almost) endless -- the point is that, between now and March 6, we want incontrovertible proof that Patrick Ross could not possibly be unaware of what's happening to him. But don't stop there.
Since Patrick has a childish tendency of pretending none of this is happening, if you do something like send him a Tweet and he responds to it, or you leave a comment at his blog and he replies to it, take a screenshot. We'll want proof. I hear judges love proof.
Anyway, I think you have a pretty good idea of what I'm after. First, I want to know where a process server can physically lay hands on evasive defendant Patrick Ross for the purpose of serving him with contempt of court if it comes to that. And in the meantime, take a minute and drop him a note. Point him to this blog post. Take a screenshot and, for now, hang onto it and if I need it, I'll let you know.
That should do for now. I'm sure there's so much I'm forgetting, but have fun in the comments section and if I need to clarify anything, I can do that.
And ... go.
(Aside: Any delightful hints as to where to find Patrick Ross can be sent to me at canadiancynic@yahoo.ca)
UPDATE THE FIRST: Some folks might be curious about the claim that Patrick Ross owes me "well over" $85,000 by now. Let me explain.
In addition to that symbolic 2 per cent per annum that's been accumulating since November of 2010, I have been assured by my lawyer that I have the right to claim all of my additional legal costs involved with chasing Patrick Ross, particularly including my lawyer's time in working with Google/Blogger to cleanse Patrick's sewer pipe of a blog of the defamation that was the entire basis of this suit. So it's safe to say we're looking at a total bill that is noticeably north of $90,000 by now, and it's just going up with every passing day.
And if Patrick thinks he's been devilishly clever in having avoided the process server all this time, well, any money I've spent running after him is going to be added to his bill in the final reckoning. Not looking so clever anymore, is he?
UPDATE THE SECOND: Occasionally, someone asks how it can be so hard simply locating a loud-mouthed, self-absorbed wanker like U of Alberta frat boi Patrick Ross. An excellent question. After all, he's certainly not shy about blogging and tweeting and in general yapping up a storm online these days, where he is apparently always the smartest guy in the room and everyone else is a LOL, OMFG, ROTFLMAO idiot. But I digress. Onward.
The problem appears to be that, apart from Patrick Ross' monumentally offensive and demeaning presence online, he has, at the atypically advanced age of 30 for a university undergrad, accomplished absolutely nothing in his life of any significance whatsoever.
If one had, say, started a business, or owned a home, or was deeply involved in community events of some kind, it would normally be pathetically easy to track them down. Once someone's put down roots in society, they become fairly easy to locate, don't you think?
In Patrick's case, however, it would appear that he has drifted through 30 years on this planet, and has absolutely nothing to show for it. Apart from a totally worthless blog and a monumentally vacuous Twitter account, Patrick Ross has left no traces. He is, quite simply, the intangible man, whose absence would cause barely a ripple in anyone's pond.
And there's the difficulty -- it's not easy to find someone whose total effect on society in general is pretty much zero. But we're trying. So feel free to help out. I recommend Oilers games and any sports bar that broadcasts professional wrestling.
UPDATE THE THIRD: And speaking of law enforcement ...
At the moment, as you can see, Patrick Ross is still not technically in contempt of court and there is not yet a warrant for his arrest, so there's no reason for the law to get involved.
But it occurs to me that if you happen to be, say, a member of the RCMP in Alberta, or the provincial police, or Edmonton city police, and you feel like helping out, and just happen to be near a computer with a few minutes to kill, and you just happen to slip and type the name "Patrick Ross" and accidentally see where he lives, well, far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"But wait," you wail girlishly like Ezra Levant, "that's ... that's ... UNETHICAL!"
Like I give a crap.
Appreciate the irony of the Harper Government currently wanting to spy on you without a warrant, then feel free to lecture me on my lack of ethics. Go ahead. I'm waiting to be judged.
In the meantime, if you're sitting next to one of those handy police computers and it just happens to give you some terrifically useful information about Patrick Ross, well, I won't tell anyone if you won't.
UPDATE THE FOURTH: While this update has no effect on the eventual enforcement of the judgment, its entertainment value is off the charts. (And while you're keeping up with regular developments, never forget that the goal here is to determine the physical location of one Patrick Ross before March 6. Just a friendly reminder. Now, back to business.)
As you're now aware (or at least should be), U of Alberta frat boi and perpetual yammering Internet troll Patrick Ross was dumb enough to maliciously defame me, ignore repeated requests to stop, mock a Notice of Libel, then blow off a properly-served Statement of Claim, at which point my lawyer quite reasonably filed to put him in default, at which point Patrick Ross was not invited to the rest of the legal proceedings where my lawyer presented my case, whereupon the judge decided that the level of aforementioned malicious defamation entitled me to $75,000 in damages and another $10,000 in court costs. But here comes the entertainment value.
There is absolutely no doubt that Patrick Ross was aware of this judgment almost immediately after it was awarded back on November 23, 2010. However, rather than frantically try to salvage the situation, Patrick made the bizarre decision to go underground, apparently believing that if I couldn't see him, I would forget about him.
Um ... not likely.
Eventually, however, it must have dawned on Patrick that he was only delaying the inevitable nad-crushing legal smackdown, and decided that the proper strategy was to (wait for it) counter-sue! For defamation! Yes, that was the best idea to percolate in the brain of boy lawyer Patrick Ross, who must have thought that if he could somehow even things out, he'd be off the hook. Whereupon Patrick Ross came up with ... this.
I am not joking.
After deranged Internet loon Patrick Ross had published well over 200 blog posts attacking your humble scribe, he apparently believed that what was contained in that attempt at a defamation counter-suit was going to even the score. (I direct your attention to the kind of monster I am, where I would go out of my way to insult Patrick Ross on his birthday -- an interesting claim since I had no idea when that was.)
To the everlasting regret of the Canadian legal system, this document was never actually filed. It was, in fact, sent electronically to my Alberta lawyer, who took such pity on it that (with my blessing) it was returned to Patrick with the explanation that it was utterly unfit for filing but my lawyer was willing to help Patrick whip it into shape. Unsurprisingly, that was the last we saw of that "filing."
In any event, the clock is ticking, March 6 is coming up fast, and my lawyer and I are still hunting for Patrick Ross. Whether we find him or not will make absolutely no difference to the proceedings of March 6, but it will speed things up afterwards when we apply to have Patrick Ross, you know, arrested.
As always, stay tuned ... there's more to come.
P.S. Given how casually Patrick Ross describes almost everything he doesn't like as "malicious," I suspect he doesn't really understand the legal meaning of that word. But that's just a guess.
UPDATE THE FIFTH: Let's talk about default judgments.
To make a long story viciously short, I won what is referred to as a "default" judgment because defendant and convicted defamer Patrick Ross was too cement-headed to even file a defence after being served with a Statement of Claim. Given 40 days to respond to legal service, Patrick Ross apparently decided that he was too busy polishing his WWE collector replica championship belts to be distracted by something as tawdry as someone suing his ass off. But, as always, here comes the entertainment value.
Even after a default judgment has gone against you, it's entirely possible that it's because you were completely unaware of it. Didn't have a clue it was going on. It's happened. And there is, in fact, legal recourse for that. What you can do is, upon learning of your legal ass-kicking, file as quickly as possible to overturn the judgment. That's not an appeal; you can't do that. What you can do is simply ask to have the judgment set aside so you can jump back in and defend. You might still get your ass kicked, but at least you'll get the chance to tell your side of the story.
Ah, but there's a catch. There are conditions that need to be satisfied for a judge to look kindly on your request to overturn. Behold. As you can see, what is required is that once you learn of the judgment against you, you cannot waste any time and must hie thee hence to a judge with all possible speed. You must also have a good reason for not having defended and, finally, you have to show that you could at least put up a good defence.
And how does all this apply to Patrick Ross? I'm so glad you asked.
Having completely disappeared for months after the judgment was announced, Patrick Ross burst back onto the scene with a depressingly typical "LOL, OMFG, ROTFL" blog post, of which I reproduce the part so pants-pissingly relevant to this discussion:
I believe you see Patrick's problem here.
After hilariously admitting (publicly, I remind you) that he's been aware of the judgment all this time, Patrick goes on to minimize the damage as being only "a default judgement", claims that his filing a defence failed miserably due to his own incompetence, then mind-numbingly goes on to brag about how all that time hiding out and being patient is suddenly going to work in his favour.
The legal system will never realize what uproarious amusement it missed when Patrick Ross chose not to pursue this legal strategy, particularly since he would almost certainly have tried to represent himself in court.
Anyway, stay tuned as I'm sure there will be more.
UPDATE THE SIXTH: From the same March 30, 2011 blog post of Patrick Ross where he bafflingly brags about having avoided dealing with a default judgment for months, we have the following intellectual rabbit dropping:
For someone who puts on airs of being a self-made legal beagle, Patrick Ross seems utterly unfamiliar with the concept of "malicious prosecution." See, the way it works is that you might have grounds for suing someone for malicious prosecution if you yourself were sued, and you won. That last part is kind of important.
Let's let Wikipedia sum it up:
Malicious prosecution is a common law intentional tort, while like the tort of abuse of process, its elements include (1) intentionally (and maliciously) instituting and pursuing (or causing to be instituted or pursued) a legal action (civil or criminal) that is (2) brought without probable cause and (3) dismissed in favor of the victim of the malicious prosecution.
Yeah, it's that last part that's pretty important (and the other parts too, of course). And this is the stand Patrick Ross is going to make?
I don't think so.
Given that the suit against him was more than adequately merited, that he chose to not file a defence and that, yes, he had his ass handed to him on a hubcap to the tune of $85,000, it's not at all clear where he thinks he's going to get a malicious prosecution case out of this.
Ah, but this is boy lawyer Patrick Ross, for which the law apparently works totally differently on his home planet. Good luck with that.
As always, stay tuned as the entertainment never ends ...
UPDATE THE SEVENTH: Still working from that same March 30, 2011 blog post, here's convicted malicious defamer Patrick Ross, weirdly suggesting that he's finally ready, willing and able to go to the mat:
Now, here's the problem with that.
Apparently, at that time, no one had properly explained to Patrick Ross that the case was over, and he lost. Reading the above, one gets the distinct impression that Patrick Ross has been biding his time and carefully preparing his rebuttal, for when he can spring it on me savagely and humiliate me in a court of law. A splendid idea ... if it weren't for the awkward detail that the case was decided months before in an Ottawa courtroom, where defaulted defendant Patrick Ross received a massive, legal boot to the nads and I was awarded a judgment large enough to stun a wildebeest. At that point, it was over, so it's not at all clear what Patrick Ross thinks he's preparing for.
As you, gentle reader, are now aware, Patrick Ross has been ordered by The Court, in no uncertain terms, to be present or be represented in a Calgary courtroom this coming March 6. And if Patrick Ross thinks this is his time to shine, and to retry this case in a legal setting where he can finally present his side of it, he is in for a world of ass-kicking discomfort. No one will be interested in his opinion so he should, as quickly as possible, disabuse himself of that notion.
On the other hand, the entertainment value would be incalculable. There's that, too.
UPDATE THE EIGHTH: Those of you with a legal background might be amused to learn that, to the best of my knowledge, at no time during these proceedings over the past two years has Patrick Ross ever retained a lawyer.
Feel free to let us know what you think about that in the comments section.
P.S. Just to make sure you appreciate how all this has played out, convicted defamer and soon-to-be indentured servant Patrick Ross 1) was served with a Notice of Libel (which he mocked), 2) was served with a Statement of Claim (which he ignored until reminded of it), 3) failed to properly file a statement of defence (later claiming he tried, then admitting that it was rejected due to his own incompetence), 4) learned of the default judgment, at which point, he went underground to escape accountability for his actions, 5) surfaced months later, bragging about how his disappearance somehow worked in his favour, 6) threatened all and sundry with legal actions months after it was too late, and 7) in general made such a contemptuous ass of himself that a judge was more than happy to allow us to serve him substitutionally for his upcoming March 6 court appearance in Calgary.
And in all this time, he never hired a lawyer. Feel free to opine on the wisdom of this strategy in the comments section.
UPDATE THE NINTH: In case you're a bit confused as to Patrick Ross' legal obligations right this minute, let me explain the concept of substitutional service, and why Patrick Ross might want to get himself a really good lawyer really quickly.
Normally, when one is serving a defendant with legal papers (as we are doing right this minute, compelling Patrick to appear in a Calgary courtroom at 10 AM on March 6), it's typically necessary to do that service in person, so that the court can be assured the defendant received the documents. Perfectly reasonable.
However, in this case, a judge in Calgary was recently convinced that Patrick Ross is such a weaselly douchebag (I'm paraphrasing here) that we were going to be allowed to serve him substitutionally. In Patrick's case, we have been told that emailing him a copy of the Notice of Application, plus leaving a physical copy at his parents' residence in Lloydminster, is entirely sufficient, and this is the part Patrick might want to pay close attention to since I'm fairly sure he's reading all this and not taking it all that seriously.
For quite some time, self-described legal wonder bunny Patrick Ross has believed that as long as he stays out of sight hiding in someone's basement, he's all right and can't possibly be held to account for his defamation. Which means that the concept of substitutional service is going to come to him as an exceedingly unpleasant surprise.
We want Patrick's meatspace co-ordinates by March 6 so that, if he fails to show, we can then serve him personally with a contempt of court order (or whatever the legal name is). We absolutely do not need his address for this current service. Once the Notice is 1) emailed, and 2) left at his parents' house, he's been served. Period. At which point he has been ordered to appear.
I direct your attention to the linked-to document above, page 6 (whose date has been revised to March 6) and to the following text:
NOTICE TO RESPONDENTS
This application is made against you. You are a respondent.
You have the right to state your side of this matter before the Justice.
To do so, you must be in Court when the application is heard as shown below:
So understand that, at this point, Patrick Ross has been served. Which is why I'm suggesting he chat with a lawyer ASAP, so that a lawyer can explain that to him in no uncertain terms. (You can read the WARNING at the end of that document on p. 9 as well, to truly appreciate how the Court is not fucking around here and is really out of patience.)
Once again, we don't need to find Patrick Ross for this service. He (or his lawyer) must appear in court in Calgary on March 6. If he does not, we will apply to have him held in contempt, whereupon if Patrick Ross thinks things weren't going well for him thus far, well, he has no idea how much worse it's about to get.
So if you're bored on the morning of March 6 and hanging out in Calgary, you're free to pop down to the courthouse. Regardless of whether or not Patrick shows up, it should be worth the time.
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The hunt for Patrick Ross: Yeah, it's on.
(UPDATE, Saturday, Feb 25: Even though Patrick Ross has publicly announced (probably stupidly, but that's par for the course) that he is "looking forward" to his March 6 court date in Calgary, he appears to think this will be the appropriate venue to "report a crime." If Patrick thinks this required appearance will be the appropriate forum to air a laundry list of old and irrelevant grievances, I suspect he will be sorely disappointed.
Oh, and given that he has now openly and publicly bragged about how much he anticipates this court appearance, if he mysteriously doesn't show, things are going to go very badly for him indeed. If you run into him before March 6, you might want to point that out.)
I realize this might be getting repetitive but, as hard as it might be to believe, my lawyers are still looking for malicious defamer Patrick Ross, who by now is into me for over $90,000, and that number continues to climb.
(Aside: Currently, this is the state of things -- Patrick Ross has been told to appear in a Calgary court on Tuesday, March 6. And he apparently has a very bizarre idea of what will happen there, as you can read below.)
Patrick Ross continues to be elusive, apparently simply because he is such a vacuous, unaccomplished nobody that he's never really left his mark anywhere, and probably just drifts from one frat brother's basement to another, slamming back Coors Light and shrieking at the television whenever professional wrestling comes on.
In any event, since all of the sordid details of this case have been covered in earlier posts, I'm going to keep it short, and tell you everything I can about Patrick Ross, and you will in turn drop me an e-mail at canadiancynic@yahoo.ca and tell me where he lives. Yeah, that's how it's going to play out.
So without further ado, what we think we know about Patrick Ross:
- Last known city of residence: Edmonton, AB
- E-mail address: ddp316@hotmail.com
- Phone number: 306-821-7328
- Date of birth: June 17, 1981
- Blog: http://badcompanycanada.blogspot.com
- Twitter account: https://twitter.com/#!/outlawtory
- Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/people/Patrick-Ross/508906366
- Parents' residence: 4730 - 30 St, Lloydminster, SK
And, finally, here's an undated photo of Patrick Ross, accompanied by someone I can only guess is his date:
Getting an actual residence address for Patrick Ross would be splendid, but even if you don't know that, there are a few things that would be useful to know:
- Is Patrick Ross still a student at the University of Alberta? Have you seen him around there recently? Where? (His Facebook page suggests he goes to the gym regularly. The campus gym?)
- If he is still a student, what is his field of study? What year is he in? What courses is he taking?
- Is he a member of any organization that meets on a regular basis at which he can be served legally?
- Do you know what he does for a living? Does he currently have a job? Where?
I think you get the idea. Even if you can't pinpoint Patrick Ross for us, the more we know about him, the better. And feel free to check back here on a regular basis over the next couple of weeks. As I get more information, I'll post it here to help you along.
P.S. I just got off the phone with a private investigator who's ready and willing to smoke Patrick Ross out of whatever spidey hole he's hiding in. But I figure I'll take a few days and crowdsource this first to see what happens. Don't let me down.
UPPITY DATE: In a recent comment on his own blog, fugitive Patrick Ross seems to suggest he is totally ready for his court date in Calgary on March 6:
However, it's not at all clear he knows what he should be preparing for. Patrick appears to be under the delusion that he will, in some bizarre way, be given free rein to expound on my general badness as a person, or something equally baffling.
This would be a mistake.
As you can probably read from the linked-to legal documents above, Patrick Ross is being ordered to appear because he's been ignoring properly-served legal documents for some months now. And if he thinks this upcoming court date is his opportunity to get up on a soapbox and wax indignant over the way he thinks he's been treated, I suspect he is in for a very unpleasant time. But that's just a guess.
P.P.S. If you know Patrick Ross personally and happen to run into him in the next few days, you should tell him that he really needs to get a lawyer. A good deal of Patrick's current trouble stems from the fact that he believed he could handle all of this on his own (being the self-taught legal beagle that he thinks he is), and we can see just where that got him.
So if you bump into Patrick, for the love of God, advise him that he needs help. In more ways than one.
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