A Canadian Frontline Nurse who sued the media for libel over allegations about their rallies is appealing to the public for help with a $315,000 bill to cover the legal costs of her opponents..Kristen Nagle spoke to former MP Derek Sloan on his Rumble channel Funding the Fight to explain the case..“Canadian Frontline Nurses organized these rallies in support of health care workers when it was mandated; it was job or no job. So we did these rallies, protests at hospitals all across the country, huge turnouts. They were peaceful, amazing. But we were slandered quite viciously in the media, because it was such a successful movement,” Nagle explained..“It was said all across Canada that we interfered with health and ambulance access, that we stopped cancer treatments from happening and that we assaulted healthcare workers.”.Nagle called the allegations “slander and defamation” and launched a lawsuit against Vancouver Island media organization TNI and the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA)..However, an anti-SLAPP motion was made against them and the judge sided with their opponents. SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation..“We felt we got slapped in the face. The anti-SLAPP is supposed to be there to protect small organizations like ourselves and individuals that are having public dissent in conversations and that create public dialogue. But, however, these bigger organizations turned it against us, and we lost.”.In her 29-page decision issued Dec. 23, Ontario Superior Court Justice Marie-Andrée Vermette said plaintiffs "failed to establish they have suffered sufficiently serious harm" and "failed to show a causal link between the harm they allege and the publications in issue." .Vermette also called the $1 million suit “puzzling” and “surprising,” given similar information had appeared in “numerous” other Canadian outlets. She noted how Nagle “stated that CBC ruined her career and destroyed her life. The plaintiffs have not sued CBC for libel.".The CNA slammed the nurses in a Sept. 9, 2021 press release that read, “The reckless views of a handful of discredited people who identify as nurses have aligned in some cases with angry crowds who are putting public health and safety at risk. They have drawn in anti-science, anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-public health followers.”.The release complained media coverage had turned to “images of surly mobs happy to stand in front of health-care settings and harass, threaten and even assault health-care workers coming and going in the business of saving lives. These protests have stunned and saddened exhausted health-care workers. They are demoralizing, infuriating and dangerous. The situation is completely unacceptable and it must stop immediately.”.A Sept. 11, 2021 TNI article by “VanIsle.News Staff” labelled Nagle and Choujounian as “unhinged, conspiracy touting nurses” and claimed, “On September 1st, mobs of people swarmed hospitals to scream and hurl insults at frontline healthcare workers. A nurse was spat at while heading to her shift at Nanaimo General Hospital.”.After the favourable verdict last December, VanIsle News Network editor Will Horter told CBC, “This was a classic SLAPP suit in the sense they were just trying to shut us up,” adding, “we were surprised they decided to pick on a small media outlet on Vancouver Island. I think they underestimated us and to their detriment.”.The court ordered Nagle and her fellow Ontario nurses Kristal Pitter and Sarah Choujounian to pay the legal costs for TNI and CNA. In her July 26 interview with Sloan, Nagle said the amounts were a shock, despite contrary claims by the judge in the decision..“I can assure you that I definitely was not aware of how high the cost could be coming back to us. So it was quite outrageous. And, yeah, it is just really disheartening,” Nagle said..“It wasn't just about us. It was about everyone else that stood with us. It was quite disheartening to show the whole other level of the legal system that I was naive to two years ago when we started this.”.Sloan expressed support for the CFN rallies and their lawsuit in the video..“It's really frustrating and those rallies were such amazing events. And I want to just thank you for your involvement in organizing those,” Sloan said..“We just want to ask people to help support you in this situation. It takes a lot of guts to go to court against some of these big guys, and we're not always going to win in these cases.”.Nagle was the first beneficiary of Sloan’s Funding the Fight initiative, which he started in October, 2022. It led to a successful campaign to raise $12,000 to cover a fine Nagle received for attending Pastor Henry Hildebrandt’s Church of God at an indoor Easter Sunday service April 25, 2021..On Feb. 9, 2022, during the Freedom Convoy, Nagle confronted a CBC news crew immediately after recording a report on the streets of Ottawa. The five-minute video, filmed by Marcel Irnie, has since been viewed more than 755,000 times on YouTube.
