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by Mike Caswell

A judge in the Supreme Court of British Columbia has ordered Business in Vancouver to pay $252,000 in damages to Stephen Pineau, the former chief executive officer of OTC Markets listing Viscount Systems Inc., over a story that BIV published in 2015. BIV defamed Mr. Pineau, 61, by briefly referring to him as part of an article about fraud and the mishandling of company money. Mr. Pineau said that the story led to him being rejected for multiple jobs.

The defamation award is contained in a decision released on Thursday, Jan. 4. The judge has ordered BIV to pay $72,000 in general damages plus $180,000 in special damages. The award is against BIV as well as Glacier Media Inc., which owns BIV and several other publications. The award is also against the author of the story, Tyler Orton.

The case stems from a story that Mr. Orton wrote on Jan. 20, 2015. The article was not about Mr. Pineau specifically, with much of the content focused on whistle-blowers and how they could prevent "corporate mishandling of funds" if they were properly protected. The story pointed out that the U.S. Securities and Exchange had made payouts to corporate whistleblowers as high as $30-million (U.S.), but no such program existed in Canada.

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