My cousin Vinny

A few weeks ago, the National Post's Joseph Brean had a good summary of the various battles surrounding the Canadian Human Rights Commission, including a brief mention of former CHRC lawyer Giacomo Vigna's threatened lawsuit against me. Here's what Brean wrote in a "fact box" that accompanied a larger story:

GIACOMO VIGNA

Giacomo Vigna, Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer. versus Ezra Levant, conservative blogger

WHY? Libel complaint for blog postings that mocked Mr. Vigna's refusal to testify at a hate speech hearing because he was "not in a serene state of mind."

Vigna was the Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer who, out of the blue, told the tribunal that he wanted everything to stop because he wasn't feeling serene.

Since then, presumably at the demand of Vigna, the Post ran the following correction:

A "fact box" in the paper on May 10 wrongly described the reasons for a libel notice filed by Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyer Giacomo Vigna against blogger Ezra Levant.

Mr. Vigna's notice is in response to alleged, repeated defamatory statements against him on Mr. Levant's Web site.

The sidebar also wrongly described Mr. Vigna's role at a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing.

Mr. Vigna had asked for a one-day postponement of the hearing due to health reasons while acting as commission counsel.

The National Post apologizes to Mr. Vigna for the errors.

I'm all for correcting errors. But did the Post really make an error -- and is their correction itself really accurate?

As to what Vigna is complaining about, it's not really tough to figure out. Readers can look at Vigna's threatened lawsuit for themselves, decide how that suit can best be summed up, and whether the National Post's summary was fair. It seems pretty obvious that what embarrassed Vigna was my publication of Vigna's own bizarre comments about his mental "serenity" as captured by the tribunal's stenographer. They're repeated again and again in his libel notice to me.

Here are some excerpts from the transcript Vigna is concerned about, taken from page 4867. Let's look at them again, not just for their sheer entertainment value, but to see if the Post should really have apologized. I've put my favourite parts in bold:

MR. VIGNA: Sorry. Mr. Chair, I don't have the flu but I don't feel in a serene state of mind to proceed with the file today. I don't feel very well. I feel dizzy, I feel anxiety, and I am not in a serene state of mind to proceed with this file today.  

I have a lot of things worrying me right now and I don't want to elaborate, but my colleague said, Mr. Fine, there are some certain incidents that have occurred which I don't feel at liberty to elaborate right now, which have had an impact on my ability to proceed in a professional way on this file, at least for today, because I wouldn't be rendering the Commission a just service by proceeding in this condition.  

I am not dying, Mr. Chair, I don't have the flu, but I am not mentally capable of proceeding under these circumstances.

THE CHAIRPERSON: But the witness is here?

MR. VIGNA: The witness is here. It's not the question of the witness. The witness is here. I thought until this morning that I would proceed, but I really don't feel primarily mentally able to proceed, and physically too.

...MR. CHRISTIE: I have heard two explanations which are as frivolous as any I have ever heard in justifying an adjournment of a whole proceeding… To say I am not feeling well, but sit here and talk about it, is inconsistent. There is no medical certificate, and I heard very faintly Mr. Vigna say I'm not physically sick, I don't have a serene state of mind. Very few of us in the difficulties we face always have a serene state of mind. I don't know what that means.

This is not a case of a nervous breakdown or a mental state justifying a psychiatric examination. I am certain of that. To say I don't feel like doing it today is insulting... 

MR. VIGNA: Mr. Chair, I will provide a medical certificate.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Please sit down, Mr. Vigna.

MR. VIGNA: I feel insulted by that comment.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Please sit down.

That was the last time Giacomo Vigna ever appeared at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in the Warman v. Lemire case. I don't know if he's appeared for the CHRC in other tribunals; I doubt it. He managed to scupper the Lemire hearings for a full month, and his bizarre breakdown was enough to cause tribunal chairman Athanasios Hadjis, no friend of Lemire, to order costs be paid to Lemire's legal team by the CHRC, for their travel and hotel expenses for that day's hearings.

Vigna was replaced by Margot Blight, a woman with better powers of concentration than Vigna. But it wasn't the last time the tribunal talked about Vigna's serenity.

On the day of his, uh, troubles, Vigna gave his lawyer's undertaking -- a professional promise -- to file a medical certificate. But Vigna still hasn't done so, a year later. As chairman Hadjis said when Blight took over, he was still waiting for Vigna. "My request still stands", he said the following month, as captured on page 5406 of this transcript.  

Back to the Post's correction. They write that Vigna was upset about a series of things, not just my jokes about his serenity.

Their bigger correction is Vigna's assertion that he wanted only one day off, for illness. But that's just not true. At no time, according to the transcript, did Vigna state he wanted only a day off; at no time, despite his professional undertaking to do so, has Vigna substantiated his fantastic claim that he really was sick.

Like a schoolboy making excuses for not having done his homework, he uttered the first thing that came to mind, and ran out of class -- never to return again, certainly not with the required note from his mom.

Not only were Vigna's "serenity now" antics offensive to Lemire's counsel and the tribunal chairman himself, but they so embarrassed the CHRC -- and that's pretty tough to do! -- that they fired him and replaced him with Blight.

I understand a newspaper's principled and pragmatic desire to apologize when they get their facts wrong. But Brean and the Post didn't -- their apology itself was an exercise in fiction. Oh well; let it be. It's Vigna's sole consolation.

I'd compare Vigna to Joe Pesci's character in My Cousin Vinny, but that's not fair. Because in the end, Vinny won his trial, he won the respect of the opposing lawyers and he impressed the tough-as-nails judge himself. And, unlike Vigna, Vinny knew that when you make promises to judges, you'd better keep them.