Toronto’s Dominion Voting Systems sues Rudy Giuliani for $1.3B US
]
Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.3 billion US lawsuit against former U.S. president Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of defamation in what it called his “big lie” campaign about widespread fraud in the presidential election, court documents on Monday showed.
Trump and his allies spent two months denying his election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the Nov. 3 election, and claiming without evidence that it was the result of widespread voter fraud, before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” the lawsuit says. “Giuliani’s statements were calculated to — and did in fact — provoke outrage and cause Dominion enormous harm.”
Giuliani and his lawyer, Robert Costello, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Giuliani has stood by his claims about the election, saying during a radio show last week he is being attacked for “exercising my right of free speech and defending my client.”
Today legal representatives for #DominionVotingSystems filed a defamation complaint against Rudy Giuliani in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. He continues to make demonstrably false claims and we intend to hold him and others who amplify such claims to account. —@dominionvoting
Dominion is seeking $1.3 billion in damages from the former New York City mayor, alleging in the lawsuit that “he and his allies manufactured and disseminated the ‘Big Lie,’ which foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election.”
The company, which formed in Toronto in 2002 and has U.S. headquarters in Denver, Co., filed an earlier lawsuit against Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, whom the company also accused of spreading false conspiracy theories for two months about the election.
Lawsuit meant ’to set the record straight’
Dominion said it filed the Giuliani lawsuit “to set the record straight” and to “stand up for itself, its employees, and the electoral process.”
Dominion states in its lawsuit that it has spent $565,000 on private security to protect its employees, who are facing harassment and death threats.
A worker passes a Dominion Voting ballot scanner while setting up a polling location at an elementary school in Gwinnett County, Ga., on Jan. 4, in advance of the state’s U.S. Senate runoff election. (Ben Gray/The Associated Press)
Separately, a senior Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, has also filed a defamation lawsuit against the Trump campaign, saying he had been driven into hiding because of death threats from Trump supporters.
Dominion is a major U.S. manufacturer of voting machines, and various Dominion machines were used in more than two dozen states during the 2020 election. The company’s systems have also been used in federal leadership races and in some provinces and municipalities, according to the Canadian Press.
Conservative media figures also put on notice
One of those states, Michigan, had threatened Dominion founder John Poulos with a subpoena in order to testify at a state senate committee hearing.
At the Dec. 15 session, Poulos appeared voluntarily and rebutted a series of allegations and conspiracy theories that had been put forth, pointing out to Republican lawmakers that no one had accused the company of criminal wrongdoing “under oath,” only in the court of public opinion and on social media.
“It is technologically impossible to see votes being counted in real-time or to flip them,” said Poulos, of one allegation. “The comments about our company being started in Venezuela with Cuban money with the intent to steal elections are beyond bizarre and are complete lies,” he said, addressing another claim.
President and CEO of Dominion Voting Systems John Poulos, seen on Jan. 9, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., rebutted a series of claims about election fraud last month at a Michigan hearing. (Alex Wong/Fetty Images)
Poulos also repeatedly pointed out that paper ballot counts matched the tabulations of Dominion’s machines.
In addition to the Trump campaign officials, Dominion has also threatened several media figures at Fox News, Newsmax and OANN with potential legal action.
Some pundits at those channels have already been forced to air a retraction of false claims levelled against another voting software company, Smartmatic.
Earlier this month, the right-wing website The American Thinker admitted fault over several articles it published from contributors after Dominion threatened legal action.
Front Burner 20:15 Timothy Snyder on the present and future of Trump’s ‘big lie’ “Post-truth is pre-fascism.” So wrote historian Timothy Snyder in his 2017 book, On Tyranny. He penned it in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, and he’s been warning ever since: The United States is not exceptional, a coup could be attempted there, too. Now, Trump’s presidency is in its dying days. He has been impeached by the House again, this time for “incitement of insurrection.” But the big lie, as Snyder calls it, that Trump seeded — that the 2020 election was stolen from him — what becomes of that lie now? Today on Front Burner, Snyder explores that question. 20:15
“These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion’s supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion’s machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted fraudulently,” the website said.
“These statements are completely false and have no basis in fact.”
A group of prominent attorneys last week asked New York’s judiciary to suspend Giuliani’s law licence because he made false claims in post-election lawsuits and because he urged Trump’s supporters to engage in a “trial by combat” shortly before they stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
TC Energy and Alberta face long odds if they sue U.S. government over cancelled Keystone XL
]
Article content
CALGARY – TC Energy Corp. is now weighing its options after stopping work on its cancelled Keystone XL pipeline project, but any attempt to sue the United States government over the scrapped project has little chance of succeeding, legal experts say.
Following Joe Biden’s inauguration as U.S. president Wednesday, he took the widely expected step of cancelling the cross-border permit for the US$14.4-billion, Alberta-to-Texas heavy oil pipeline through an executive order.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or TC Energy and Alberta face long odds if they sue U.S. government over cancelled Keystone XL Back to video
The decision marks the third time a U.S. president has blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, which requires a presidential permit to cross the U.S. border: Barack Obama vetoed the line twice before Donald Trump issued a permit while in office.
Now, Biden has dealt what could be the final blow for the 830,000-barrels-per-day oil pipeline project that has been in regulatory purgatory and endless litigation since it was first proposed in 2008.
Canadian firm files fresh class-action lawsuit against Nintendo over Joy-Con Drift
]
Nintendo is facing yet another class-action lawsuit for Joy-Con drift.
On 15th January, Canadian firm Lambert Avocat Inc. filed an application to be permitted to bring a class action suit against Nintendo in a bid to “obtain a compensation for all Québec consumers who bought the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite gaming systems, as well as Joy-Con and Nintendo Switch Pro controllers”.
The paperwork says that “goods purchased must be fit for the purposes for which goods of that kind are ordinarily used and must be durable in normal use for a reasonable length of time”, and therefore Joy-Con drift - the seemingly common experience of finding your controller not responding properly to analogue stick controls, or suddenly controlling itself - constitutes “an important, serious, and hidden defect”.
“Nintendo failed to mention an important fact in a representation made to a consumer: the quality of its products, which is a key element likely to affect the consumer’s informed decision in purchasing a product,” the filing alleges (thanks, IGN).
US lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Nintendo a couple of years ago, this one also suing for the defective thumbsticks. Just a few months later, US players experiencing issues with Joy-Cons on the then-newly released Nintendo Switch Lite also joined a class-action.
Last year, Nintendo gave its first formal apology for the continued Joy-Con problems faced by Nintendo Switch owners.
“Regarding the Joy-Con, we apologise for any trouble caused to our customers,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said at the time. “We are continuing to aim to improve our products, but as the Joy-Con is the subject of a class-action lawsuit in the United States and this is still a pending issue, we would like to refrain from responding about any specific actions.”