Judge orders Ezra Levant to pay Saskatchewan lawyer $80,000 in defamation suit

An Ontario judge who heard a defamation lawsuit against Sun News Network host Ezra Levant ruled Thursday that the controversial media personality libelled a Saskatchewan lawyer in a series of blog posts the judge said were "motivated by malice."
Justice Wendy Matheson ordered Levant to pay $80,000 in damages to Khurrum Awan and remove "defamatory words" about the man from his website within 15 days.
"I find that the defendant's dominant motive in these blog posts was ill-will, and that his repeated failure to take even basic steps to check his facts showed a reckless disregard for the truth," Matheson wrote in her decision.
Awan was completing his articling and looking for work as a lawyer when the statements were posted online by Levant. Awan was seeking $100,000 in damages.
Levant's posts centred on Awan's testimony at a British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal case about a complaint regarding an article in Maclean's magazine from 2006, titled "The future belongs to Islam."
Awan was a law student when the article was published and was among a group of students who alleged the article was Islamophobic.
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