City withdraws Three Stooges libel threat

• Drew Halfnight, Mercury staff  Wed Aug 03 2011

GUELPH — Threatened legal action has been withdrawn against a downtown merchant who compared city staff to the Three Stooges.  “The City of Guelph will not be proceeding with litigation,” Mayor Karen Farbridge wrote in an email to Marc Black, owner of Hempire on Carden Street, where large-scale construction projects have choked off traffic and weakened business much of the past five years.  The mayor later confirmed in an email to the Mercury the city has also dropped the idea of proceeding legally against the Guelph Mercury newspaper.  The litigation threat arose after Black circulated an email comparing city planner Don Kudo and his staff to the classic slapstick, loopy trio. The Mercury reproduced an excerpt from the email and two related messages on its municipal politics blog, 59 Carden St. Last Friday, the city served libel notices to Black and the Mercury. The threats were met with a flurry of reader comments roundly condemning the action.  “It's a classic case of kicking a man while he's down,” Kris Raso, co-owner of Little Shop of Guitars at 58 Carden St., said. “It was blown way out of proportion.”  The guitar shop continued its sonic protest against the city Tuesday, blasting Led Zeppelin tunes toward City Hall while several downtown stores publicized their support for Black. No fewer than 10 merchants, including B-Chocolate, Wow Café, Gordon Taylor Music and the Hockey Shop Source for Sports hung posters on their storefronts showing an image of Larry, Curly and Moe next to the words, “After 5 years, we agree … ‘Enough is enough.' We support Marc Black.” Reached on Tuesday, Black said he had been “blowing off steam” and “trying to be humorous” when he wrote the email featuring the Three Stooges. “I just stirred the pot I guess, and hit a nerve,” he said. “It kind of just blew up on everybody. I don't think it made the city look good, and I'm not sure how much it advanced our plight,” he said.  “In retrospect I don't think I'd name a personal individual,” he added. “It probably wasn't appropriate.”

Asked to account for the city's abrupt reversal, Black credited the overwhelming public response. “I think they just saw that and said, wow, this could be really bad for us.” Black said Farbridge visited Hempire in person last Friday and again on Tuesday. Black, who works outside the store, was not present on either occasion. He said Farbridge then reached out to him in an email he described as “very polite,” offering to facilitate a meeting with Kudo, to whom Black had earlier refused to apologize. This time, he accepted the offer and agreed to apologize, he said. “It was a bit of an olive branch,” Black said of Farbridge's email. Black was less impressed by a subsequent, “less amicable” email from Guelph's chief administrative officer Hans Loewig. In the email copied to other members of the downtown business community, Loewig accused Black of defamation, libel and slander before decreeing the city would not sue him. In an emailed response to questions from the Mercury, Farbridge confirmed it was Loewig, as chief administrator, who initiated the libel notice. Black declined to discuss the Loewig email, speaking instead of the suffering caused by construction on Carden to small business owners, including one who went bankrupt, another who went on stress leave and several more forced to take out extra lines of credit on their homes. He suggested the city failed to consider adequately the impact its public works projects would have on these owners and their families. Jim Garland, owner of Footprints eco-store, called the city's decision to schedule five years of large-scale construction projects on a pedestrian-friendly street lined with vulnerable businesses a case of bad timing. “There's no consideration,” he said over the noise of a generator stationed a few metres outside his door. “I just want all this to be over soon.” Guitar shop owner Kris Raso dismissed Ward 1 Coun. Jim Furfaro's notion of offering $5,000 per merchant in compensation for the years of construction. “When you combine the total losses, it's probably in the millions,” he said.
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City threatens legal action over staff, Three Stooges comparison  July 29