Vancouver mining entrepreneur wins round in Brent Pierce defamation suit

Canadian entrepreneur Rahim Jivraj has won another round in a defamation suit that was launched against him two years ago by Brent Pierce, a British Columbia promoter who has received significant regulatory sanctions from securities commissions in Canada and the U.S.

The case follows a legal dispute over a mining property in Colombia, which Jivraj said cost him $850,000 of his own money and resulted in the seizure of his computer hard drive.

In a defamation suit, launched in August 2012, Pierce alleges that Jivraj published defamatory statements in a newsletter that was mailed out to over 5,400 market-related professionals as well as in emails, online postings and conversations.

Pierce argued that Jivraj authored his own misfortune by allegedly lying about writing and publishing the articles. On October 11, 2012, Pierce successfully obtained an order before Madame Justice Loo for special costs against Jivraj because his alleged lies and alleged refusal to admit authoring and publishing the impugned articles.

Disbursements of $41,664 were awarded for the fees of the supervising solicitor and the computer analyst.

But a subsequent court order, which resulted in the seizure of Jivraj’s computer hard drive was set aside in October, 2013, after Justice Dev Dley of the B.C. Supreme Court found that Pierce failed to provide full and frank disclosure of his regulatory history during an earlier hearing.

In the set-aside order, Justice Dley made the following conclusions:

1. Pierce deliberately chose not to disclose his regulatory history.
2. Previous counsel were evasive at best when [Dley] inquired about the $9.4 million in fines levied against Pierce and that this was a deliberate tactic to avoid disclosure of the sanctions; and
3. The regulatory sanctions and the reasons for them were material facts.

In a May 28, 2014 decision, Justice Dley awarded Jivraj special costs against Pierce’s lawyers and also ordered that they pay a costs order made against Jivraj in the wake of the Anton Piller Order (which is a form of civil search warrant), that they had obtained against him and which had been set aside by the judge for material non-disclosure.

The copy of the seized hard drive is to be returned to Jivraj, according to a reasons for judgement document obtained by Stockhouse.

In an earlier interview with Stockhouse,Jivraj said the defamation suit followed a painful fight with Tresoro Mining Corp. (OTCQB: TSOR, Stock Forum) over a 248-hectare mining concession, known as the Guayabales property.

Jivraj heads privately-owned MercerBC, a Vancouver company which four years ago struck a $4 million deal with Comunidad Minera Guayabales to earn a 100% stake in the Guayabales concession.