Saturday, January 31, 2009

Our letter to CNN's Nancy Grace!

http://edition.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/nancy.grace/

Tansi/Good Day Readers:
We have received confirmation our letter to Nancy Grace was successfully transmitted.
Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Seeking Justice
Date: 31/01/2009/7:12 PM
Thank you for your email to the Nancy Grace show.
This auto reply is your notification that we have received your email. While we are unable to personally reply to every e-mail, your comments are important to us, and we do read each and every one. Comments become part of the viewer response report that is prepared and made available each day to our producers and senior management. If you have mistakenly submitted a question or story idea through this comments section, please allow time for it to be tagged as such and routed to the appropriate persons for handling.

Again, thank you for contacting us, and please visit the attached links for more information on our anchors, programs and schedules:

Would you like additional information on our anchors? Please visit our anchor bio section at http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/
Would you like to review transcripts of CNN programming? Please visit our transcript at http://www.cnn.com/transcripts

Do you need information on the show schedules? Please visit us at http://www.cnn.com/programs

Thanks again for your interest and keep your browser pointed to http://www.cnn.com/.Regards, Viewer Communications Management

"CNN, The Most Trusted Name In News"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Nancy,
Hope your twins are growing like a couple little weeds.
Lacking any formal legal training, we have become Big Fans of your show finding it to be very informative.
We're a non-Aboriginal Blog located in Winnipeg, Manitoba currently involved in a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) defamation case where the focus is not on any alleged harm done to the Plaintiffs but rather litigation chill to discourage criticism of the spending practices of a Canadian taxpayer funded corporation.
Here are the basic facts of a convoluted lawsuit now entering its sixth year:
(1) The case has its genesis in mid-September 2003 when we became aware the publicly financed Board of Directors of the Manitoba Metis Federation Inc. (MMF, Federation) had assigned one of its lawyers to monitor our precursor site www.CyberSmokeSignals.com (now defunct) looking for litigious material
(2) Once we became aware we had, in effect, been placed on "a defamation watch," we exercised due diligence by engaging the pro bono services of a then Manitoba Legal Aid attroney to act as our General Legal Counsel. This was publicly acknowledged. It was the same individual who proposed, wrote and subsequently sanctioned the posting of the allegedly defamatory material (a petition calling for greater financial controls on MMF election campaign funding
(3) We later discovered our General Legal Counsel had entered into a retainer agreement to provide legal services to the Federation yet has never been named as a Co-Defendant
(4) By visiting the Manitoba Justice Department's website (File Search Registry - wwww.jus.gov.mb.ca) and entering CI05-01-41955), you will find to date an incredible 145 documents, most by the Plaintiffs, have been entered into the record
(5) From the beginning one Board of Director refused to sign the Statement of Claim while four others have subsequently withdrawn by signing Notices of Dicontinuance
(6) The lawyer for the Plaintiffs is:
Murray N. Trachtenberg
Posner & Trachtenberg
710-491 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E4
Telephone: (204) 940-9602
Facsimile: (204) 944-8878
(7) Shortly we will be attending our fourth Pre-Trial Conference presided over by a Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench Justice. Counsel for the Plaintiffs successfully applied for a publication ban. However, it only covers this stage of the proceedings
8) We believe this case will set precendents and raise technological issues that will reverberate among Bloggers well beyond Manitoba
If you or your staff require further information or clarification, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
Blogmaster

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home