Sometimes, anonymous postings in public chat rooms are not so anonymous.

After posting malicious messages about a Calgary oil and gas production company, a chat-room user was ordered to pay damages to both the targeted company and the president.

Robert Waldner, president and CEO of Vaquero Energy Ltd., was hired to consolidate the company’s business. During the consolidation, Vaquero’s stock fell significantly. During this same period, Waldner was alerted to defamatory messages being posted on a chat room. This chat room was part of the services offered on a Stockhouse Media Corporation website, which provides financial information to its subscribers.

From February to July, 2002, chat-room member “napo9” posted disparaging remarks about Vaquero and Waldner’s management of the company. Similar messages were posted by “alec6” after this time.

According to recent court documents, the messages accused Waldner of being “insane, retarded, managing the company for his own benefit” and compared his conduct to that of Hitler, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Waldner sought legal counsel to identify the author. Stockhouse revealed that napo9 and alec6 were registered under different names, but with the same password. Investigation found most of the alec6 e-mails could be traced to the computer of Nick Weir, a business consultant whom Waldner had met at a lunch in Toronto. Once identified, Weir was served with a statement of claim and the e-mails from alec6 stopped.

In his defence, Weir testified he did not send the e-mails, and instead, suggested that his open-concept office space, shared with Currah Capital, would have enabled someone else to use his computer or “spoof” his IP address.

In a recent judgment, Justice C. A. Kent found that she was “satisfied that the postings were done by Mr. Weir,” and denied the plausibility of IP spoofing in this case.

Because of the “particularly malicious” words in the postings and the fact that the e-mails were sent at a critical time in both Vaquero’s and Waldner’s history, the court awarded $10,000 to Vaquero and $65,000 to Waldner.

(Cases taken from records from Alberta provincial court, Court of Queen’s Bench, and Court of Appeal.)