There’s a chance this federal election could see Twitter drama spill over into real life.

Kathryn Marshall, a lawyer who is married to federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, threatened NDP MPP Rima Berns-McGown with a libel suit after Berns-McGown called Hamish “racist” on Twitter.

Hi Rima. My husband Hamish isnt racist. Your tweet is libel. Take it down now unless you would like to be a defendant.

— Kathryn Marshall (@Lawsome_) September 20, 2019

Berns-McGown had tweeted about Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s blackface scandal, slamming both the Liberals and Conservatives for their reactions.

“Trudeau’s excuses are nauseating but it’s even worse to watch Scheer trying to make hay out of this when he continues to excuse racist candidates & staffers. So let’s have a real conversation about racism in [Canada], shall we? It’s so much deeper than PM #blackface #cdnpoli #elxn43,” she wrote.

When Ontario lawyer Ryan O’Connor asked Berns-McGown to name a racist Conservative staffer, Berns-McGown replied with a link to a CBC article about Hamish Marshall.

Kathryn replied, advising the NDP MPP to take her tweet down “unless you would like to be a defendant.”

The NDP told QP Briefing that Berns-McGown hasn’t heard anything more about a lawsuit from Kathryn, who did not respond to requests for comment via Twitter and email.

Kathryn is an associate at MacDonald and Associates specializing in employment law, according to her employee page. On her Twitter account, she tweets almost non-stop about the federal election, promoting the Conservatives and taking shots at the Liberals.

Her husband, Hamish, is a former director at Rebel Media — a far-right news outlet, known for its anti-Muslim, anti-Trudeau content, which came under scrutiny for its positive coverage of the white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Hamish is also the chair of Scheer’s 2019 campaign, having previously run his successful leadership campaign for the Conservative party.

Premier Doug Ford spokesperson Laryssa Waler ”liked” Kathryn’s tweet threatening Berns-McGown with a lawsuit.

Asked whether she felt it was appropriate for the premier’s office to weigh in on federal campaign-related libel threats, Waler initially declined to comment. Then, in a separate email, she added: “But generally speaking, likes and RT’s don’t equal endorsements. I assumed that was a given these days?”

Howard Winkler, defamation lawyer and founder of Winkler Dispute Resolution, said Kathryn would not have a good case for a defamation case about herself, “unless she were to claim that it is harmful to her reputation to suggest that she is married to someone who is accused of being racist. In my view this would be a weak and technical claim at best.”

The “real threat,” Winkler said in a statement to QP Briefing, is a lawsuit from Hamish. “The immediate purpose of such a threat would be to extract an apology or to deter Ms. Berns-McGown and others from making similar statements in the future. I suspect that this is the strategic purpose of this threat.”

But a threat to sue someone during an election campaign is probably “fairly empty,” Winkler said. “Litigation is expensive and takes years to resolve. Any vindication that then comes with a favourable judgment, again absent actual harm, is often of little real benefit,” he said.

He added that Berns-McGown, and people accusing others of racism in general, “would be better served by making it clear that what they are communicating are expressions of opinion rather than statements of fact and by providing the factual basis for their opinions.”

Brian Radnoff, a commercial litigator with Dickinson Wright, said these types of threats are becoming more common.

In April, Trudeau himself threatened to sue Scheer over comments the Conservative leader made about the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

In the past few provincial and federal elections, “politicians, or people connected to politicians, or political parties have been a lot quicker to threaten defamation claims as a result of comments made during the election,” Radnoff said.

Kathryn’s claim might have a chance of success if she follows through with it, Radnoff said, since under Canadian defamation law defendants generally have to prove that what they said is true.

”You can’t hide behind the defence of fair comment if it’s like, ‘Well, that’s just my opinion,’” he said.

Lawyer Kathryn Marshall, wife of Andrew Scheer’s campaign manager, threatens NDP MPP with libel suit over racism claim

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