“CYBER LIBEL” MAN FINED

TORONTO – The Ontario Court of Appeal has ordered Jorge Lopenhandia, a homeless Vancouver man, to pay $125,000 in damages for libeling a gold mining corporation on several websites.

When Barrick Gold Corp. sued Lopenhandia for libel last year, the trial judge Justice Katherine Swinton, concluded his Internet postings amounted to an “emotional, often incoherent” diatribe that no reasonable person would take seriously.

Swinton awarded the company a nominal $15,000 for injury to its reputation.

But the appeal court set aside her decision, calling Lopenhandia’s campaign of “cyber libel” malicious, high-handed, unremitting, tenacious, vicious, spiteful, “wide ranging in substance and world-wide in scope.”