Dean Erika Chamberlain:
It is uncontroversial that a Plaintiff can recover compensatory damages for misfeasance in a public office. Indeed, since material damage is a required element of the tort, the plaintiff’s loss will already have been substantially established, and will only need to be quantified at the damages phase.
Book: Misfeasance on a Public Office
“..the damages phase.. I love how that sounds.
So, what damage am I claiming when I sued that Aurora knowingly made a decision to have me arrested 7 times?
False arrest – Compensatory Damages
Right off the top, you will say “But Bob… you kept blogging! You can’t expect compensation for guilty breaches!”
Yes, their stated goal was to keep me from communicating my findings to staff of Aurora. My first police recognizance July 14, 2017 was “Do not communicate in any way for any reason with any staff of the Town of Aurora.” It was quite obvious that this order was an overreaching, illegal order. But I signed it. The Sergeant who had me sign said if I mailed in a tax cheque... I would be arrested. At my trial I will play this clip as proof police KNEW their own recognizance was ILLEGAL, OVER REACHING and IN EXPLICABLE… except that it is exactly what Mayor Dawe and CAO Nadorozny asked them to do. Silence me 100% so no staff would hear the illegal acts I uncovered. These acts happened in plain sight of staff.
Cops arrested me on Fridays. They KNOW they could (and did) threaten prison until Monday morning if I did not sign their orders. They plan the sin advance. Maliciously using it as an excuse to pressure a person to agree to almost anything, Cop: “Well, if you disagree, you can wait and see of a judge agrees with you on Monday.That was an illegal recognizance.
Since the first 2 charges were dropped in a few weeks by the efforts of ME, alone, without a lawyer, every last thing that happened after that was the fault of Aurora. If they had NOT arrested me, I would NEVER had been arrested for blogging the truth. The first arrest begat the next 6.
Keep in mind the exact words I blogged which had me arrested… I blogged NAMES… it did not matter that what I said about them was all true, the order was to NOT blog their NAMES. So, I stopped using actual names, instead I used physical descriptions. So, then lawyers for Aurora staff went to the courts and had me ordered not to “infer” their names. Imagine. So worried are the associates of Aurora that they demanded that their free lawyers, provided by Lloyd’s of London, get even the slightest suggestion of a person removed from my blog. I blogged a tiny photo of page one of my lawsuit, and was arrested for that, and convicted by J. Rose who had gone to my blog the night before, and admitted that in his decision. Rather than look for the mandatory mens rea, he looked at what I wrote and convicted me and let the 3 ladies all read Impact Statements to me. I had it reversed on appeal. But NOW, I qualify and deserve to get compensation from Aurora and the others.
(Apologies to an) African Proverb: “It takes a village to raise a curtain over a blogger“
Aurora could NOT convince police to arrest me 7 times, police MUST HAVE WANTED it, too. But police cannot arrest unless the Crown agrees they see evidence of a crime. NO EVIDENCE of a crime was given to the Crown. They simply call them up and describe how bad a person I am. And every time I won, they redoubled their activities. And of course, by the time I get to a court, they have created a dialogue to convince any justice how viciously I blogged a name, just a name on a legal document in the public domain.
On February 27, 2020 I won big time. The ladies had ALL called my Probation Officer at the same time, Maria Bedford, and all lied that police were investigating me for TRESPASS, being within 500 METERS of a Catholic school close to York Transit bus stop #1208. My home was within 500 meters of her school, But since she had no concept of distance, she had sent me a Notice citing a one KILOMETRE circle around her school as being HER lands. Why that distance? Because that distance is what the Crown set for the ladies. They assumed it was legal to trespass me BEYOND land owned by the Pope. That I could not drive to my home without being in Trespass of the Pope. Their knowledge of the law is so slim.
The Pope Pitches In
Yes, police had been called in and lied to by the principal, Ms. Ines Donato. I have the police report. She said she spoke to parents, that I was on school property filming the children. My video is posted on YouTube. No kids of course, just parents. At no time did I set foot on her land. She thinks the Pope owns everything. And the parents parked in the bus stop told me in very certain terms they were given permission by Ines Donato to park inside the bus stop, and between the stop and the crossing guard so he is blocked from seeing traffic when the bus comes.
Anyway, I called up Det. Sgt Heather Bentham from Costco, and arranged for a chat. She objected, because they had no interest in me. But she finally agreed, and I turned on my recorder and listened for an hour while she admitted what she had done. I blogged the audio February 28, 2020. By March 3, 2020 she had called the ladies and the Crown to give her ideas for a 7th arrest. Bentham’s notes describe Crown Greg Elder suggesting 4 or 5 breaches she discarded as being too little, and I guess too late. She asked them all to dig deeper and finally Aurora’s lawyer, Charles Painter, suggested an event he personally witnessed weeks earlier in a court room. Jaclyn took that absurd idea and created two versions of how I spoke to her in court. She had Barry Stork back her up along with Mr. Painter. 4 stories were recorded on police note books from 3 people TRAINED in how to testify in court. They had not even considered getting together to concoct a common story, proven by the multiple lies I read.
So, the three lawyers who still today defend 5 of the 7 defendants lied to arrest me March 4, 2020. I spent a lot of money getting ready for that trial. The Crown withdrew charges two weeks before trial April 2021. I claim for over a year of stress and expense of a 7th arrest during which my wife divorced, my son hated to tell anyone about me, my brother disowned me and I have not spoken to him since. All our friends abandoned me, supported my wife of course. The Family Court threatened to sell my house from under me if I did not do it myself. So I did. I lost a fortune. Sale. Packing. Moving. Alone.
That loss of my Charter rights to express my opinions in whatever medium I choose is something I can be compensated for in November. A jury of my peers will listen as I describe in detail the totally foreseeable losses I endured just for asking Allan Downey and his staff for maintenance of the dog park. And for asking Techa Van Leeuwen for Bylaws support with two of my neighbours. Aurora, from 2012 to today, has NEVER taken action on anything I asked help with. The ONLY things they did which I had requested were for the dog park. They refused me every and all support with obvious bylaws violations. Oh, Downey DID finally run out of excuses why Canine Commons was HIS ONLY PARK without a sign. Everyone drove right by without seeing we had a dog park at all. So his guys routed a sign out of a board.
They never said “Enough. Stop!” to anyone used as arrest complaint proxies during the period July 14, 2017 to March 4, 2020. In fact, so committed to the plan to keep me arrested again and again, and silenced by recognizances that they ordered their counsel, and that of their dog park manager to have THEIR lawyers make up stories to arrest me in the most recent #7 on March 4, 2020. 3 days in COVID-19 prison. All false evidence, everything fabricated. The three monkeys saw no evil, heard no evil, and yet they SPOKE a ton of evil. Charges lasted over a year, were scheduled for trial, and were inexplicably withdrawn without a word of explanation or regret.
PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY, AGGRAVATED DAMAGES
E. Chamberlain: The availability of punitive damages for misfeasance in a public office is linked to the deterrent function of the tort. This can be traced back to the tort’s origins (1703 Ashby v. White case referenced)
P. 162-169 Chapter: “Remedies”
“Holt C. J. wrote “…if public (sic) officers will infringe men’s rights, they ought to pay greater damages than other men, to deter and hinder other officers from the like offences.”
Ashby v. White https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashby_v_White
Ashby v White (1703) 92 ER 126, is a foundational case in UK constitutional law and English tort law. It concerns the right to vote and misfeasance of a public officer. Lord Holt laid down the important principle that where there is injury in the absence of financial loss (injuria sine damno) the law makes the presumption of damage and that it is sufficient to demonstrate that a right has been infringed.[3]
If the plaintiff has a right, he must of necessity have a means to vindicate and maintain it, and a remedy if he is injured in the exercise or enjoyment of it, and, indeed it is a vain thing to imagine a right without a remedy; for want of right and want of remedy are reciprocal…
As Lord Hutton wrote in Kuddus, “the power to award exemplary damages in such cases serves to
uphold and vindicate the rule of law because it makes clear that the court will not tolerate such conduct.
This statement exemplifies why I am still here. I know the courts will get it right, it’s only the lawyers who are keeping me from getting there.
As with other torts, the assessment of punitive/exemplary damages is not an exact science. The courts justify their awards based on the need for deterrence and denunciation, but the sums that they choose remain largely a mystery. It is not uncommon for the punitive damages to exceed compensatory damages by a WIDE margin, particularly if the plaintiff’s material damage was minimal.The courts clearly view punitive damages as a valuable tool in promoting the accountability of public officers.