Maurice Switzer, left, and Don Rennick of the North Bay Taxpayers' Association announce the organization's intent to move to withdraw their libel suit against deputy mayor Sheldon Forgette on Monday night. PHOTO BY LIAM BERTI
While North Bay was under a heat warning on Monday, the North Bay Taxpayers’ Association announced they will be cooling their legal tensions with deputy mayor Sheldon Forgette.
Executive members of the Association held a press conference outside of City Hall on Monday night, just prior to the committee meeting of council, where the group announced that they will move to withdraw their libel action against Forgette.
The deputy mayor is up against a $90,000 defamation lawsuit with the Taxpayers’ Association for suggesting that the group might collect the organization’s donations into their personal bank accounts, among other statements questioning their transparency and accountability.
“Our executive members have personally defrayed all of our legal costs to date, and we do not want city taxpayers to be picking up Mr. Forgette’s tab,” they announced on Monday night. “We would be well within our rights to ask for the deputy mayor’s resignation, but hope that the mere specter of legal action will teach this young man to mind his manners and learn to behave in the manner expected by those who voted him into his high municipal office.”
The deputy mayor said he has been instructed by his lawyer not to comment on Monday's announcement and said they will release something in writing in the near future.
Forgette’s legal representative, Birnie Law Firm, was hired by the city’s insurer as legal counsel for the Deputy Mayor to defend his case and was in attendance for the Association's announcement, which the group's members continued to take issue with on Monday.
“By using city resources to defend Mr. Forgette’s slanderous gibberish, council has condoned Mr. Forgette’s statements and in my opinion are complicit in this attempt to discredit the North Bay Taxpayers’ Association because of the light that we have been shining on the shenanigans going on at City Hall,” said Don Rennick, the Association's treasurer.
Then, just two weeks ago, Forgette said he felt the Association couldn’t sue in the first place because they are not a legal entity and that he and his defence team were sending a motion to have the case thrown out of court.
He also said that if the case is ultimately thrown out, he feels as though the Association should be made responsible to recover the Municipal deductible of $50,000.
At the time, Forgette said he was simply waiting for the Taxpayers’ group to amend their legal paperwork and put their own personal names on the case.
“Our sole purpose and mission was, and is, an attempt to restore the economic integrity and vitality of our city and protect our seniors and private sector employees from economic demise,” said Miles Peters, the Association's vice president. “Unfortunately, this individual lacked the humility to correct his wrongful and slanderous assertions and was called upon to do so by a higher order in a personal lawsuit."
“The fact that our city leaders have overtly used this opportunity is a vain attempt to try to silence the voice of exposure, opposition and embarrassment has nothing to do with the North Bay Taxpayers’ Association,” he added. “It is a disgrace and an insult that our city leaders intruded and injected themselves and, by extension, all taxpayers into this private transgression that involved neither the city or the taxpaying public at large.”
According to Rennick’s statement, the original claim contained an option for Forgette to retract his original statements and pay the $2,500 to cover the group's costs.
Peters also said he and the organization asked Forgette to retract his statements on two occasions, but neither request was acted on.
Forgette, on the other hand, said he responded by requesting to meet with the Association in person and not through the legal system, but that request was apparently denied as well.
“Mr. Forgette has established a pattern of making untruthful statements with no basis in fact and demonstrated that when he is called to task for these statements he runs for cover,” Rennick said on Monday. “Mr. Forgette has shown his true colours to the voting public of North Bay and I trust that they will remember this in four years.
“Rather than admit his error and accept the offer to settle, he chose to continue the charade that his comments were factual and hid behind the City’s insurer and their unlimited resources,” he added.
