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Strategies & Market Trends : Winter in the Great White North -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcos who wrote (7226)	9/6/2006 8:35:28 PM
From: Proud Deplorable	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8273

Message 22787788

To: marcos who wrote (7226)	9/29/2006 6:18:43 PM
From: russet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8273

Somebody went to court over a Stockwatch headline,...but lost:-0 Doublestar loses injunction against Stockwatch 2006-09-29 18:05 ET - Street Wire by Mike Caswell Doublestar Resources Ltd. has lost an injunction application in B.C. Supreme Court to have Stockwatch cease publishing a politically incorrect filing headline above the company's Sept. 26 news release. In spite of the court's decision, Stockwatch has changed the headline, addressing Doublestar's concerns. The imbroglio unfolded like this. A Stockwatch copy-editor wrote the filing headline "Doublestar says Ahousaht pulls paleface welcome mat" for a news release about the company cancelling drilling at its Catface Mountain project resulting from just-revealed Indian objections. "Up until Monday's meeting, the company has had a cordial relationship with the Ahousaht First Nation, with whom it has been consulting on the project for six years," the release read. It added, "At a meeting held on Monday, Sept. 25, Ahousaht hereditary chiefs advised that they were opposed to the drill program and objected to the presence of the company in the village of Ahousaht and on Catface Mountain." (Stockwatch routinely adds its own pithy, 55-character filing headlines to news releases, leaving out the spin, jargon, euphemisms or buzzwords often found in company headlines. Of course, the company's own headline remains sacrosanct, appearing verbatim, without length restriction, in large, striking capital letters, immediately above the company's news release.) When Stockwatch declined to change its Doublestar filing headline -- the company's headline remained in place -- the company's lawyers rushed to court the next morning, seeking a hearing time for an injunction application barring further publication or to have Stockwatch's headline ordered changed. Later that afternoon, Madam Justice Catherine Janet Bruce heard the application. The application Doublestar's argument centred chiefly around the apprehension of a reader mistakenly thinking the offending words were Doublestar's, and not Stockwatch's. "Doublestar says that the Headline attributes the derogatory statement contained in the Headline to Doublestar when in fact Doublestar did not make the derogatory statement," the document reads. In court, Doublestar buttressed its misled-reader argument with lawyerly outrage about Stockwatch's lack of political correctness and sensitivity. "This kind if disrespectful language ... would never have a place in our headline," the company argued. Even if the rest of Stockwatch's title did accurately paraphrase the news release, the word "paleface" reflects badly of the Ahousaht, the company complained. The headline was so offensive it would tip the balance of delicate drilling negotiations, Doublestar's lawyer said. "There really can't be a purpose in having such an awful thing on the defendant's website," he argued. Stockwatch lawyer Dan Burnett told the judge that reasonable readers would know the headline was not a literal quote, and that the gist of the the headline was true. "[Doublestar], they are the palefaces ... and their own press release makes it clear this non-aboriginal company is no longer welcome," he said. Although the title was politically incorrect, it was not defamatory, he argued. "The Stockwatch headline is so figurative, cheeky ... a reader would not conclude that somebody was reporting a quote from Doublestar," Mr. Burnett said. The judge, in ruling against the injunction, was not persuaded that a reader would think Doublestar actually used the words in the headline, but she made it clear she did not like the politically incorrect word "paleface." "This is just an editorial comment in very bad taste, and one that should not be repeated, in my view," she said. "There is no doubt that the words in the headline would connote a derogatory attitude toward the [Ahousaht]," she added. "I must dismiss this application reluctantly," she concluded. Subsequently Out of respect for Doublestar's concern that the Indians might think Doublestar said the offending words, Stockwatch subsequently changed its headline from "Doublestar says Ahousaht pulls paleface welcome mat" to "Doublestar learns Ahousaht pulls paleface welcome mat." It was not Stockwatch's intention to burden Doublestar with even the possibility -- however remote -- that Stockwatch's words were Doublestar's words. Stockwatch regrets any such misunderstanding.