Eric Lindros Sues Ex-Ref Paul Stewart And Huffington Post For $3 Million

[UPDATE: Sometimes blog life comes at you fast and shit happens while you’re in the middle of a writing blackout. Lindros is now only suing for $250,000 and thanks to the commenters who pointed this out to me. You can read the updated article on TSN here if you want. Either way, everything I say in the blog aside from the $3 million part still holds true.]

TSN – Eric Lindros has launched a $3 million defamation lawsuit against one-time NHL referee Paul Stewart and the Huffington Post, after Stewart wrote a column for the online news website that allegedly made the former Philadelphia Flyers star forward look like a “dickhead.” In documents filed in an Ontario court, Lindros says his reputation has been sullied after Stewart wrote about his poor on-ice relationship with Lindros, which was capped by an incident when Lindros allegedly tore up posters he was asked by Stewart to autograph for a charity…

…Lindros has asked a court to award him $2 million in general damages and another $1 million in aggravated damages. He has also asked the court for an injunction that would prevent Stewart, the Huffington Post, and its U.S. owner AOL, from continuing to publish Stewart’s allegedly defamatory statements…”It was both intended and foreseeable to Stewart and the AOL defendants that the article would receive widespread public attention and readership,” Lindros’s lawyers wrote in his statement of claim. “Lindros is a well-known public figure, particularly in Canada and the United States and other countries where ice hockey is popular. … (Lindros) has suffered aggravated damages as a consequence of the republications.

So if you remember from this past summer, former NHL official and frequent Huffington Post contribuer Paul Stewart wrote a piece called “Hecklers, Hooligans and the Striped-Shirted Maitre D”. In this post, he brought up a few anecdotes about his relationship with Eric Lindros and how it was extremely rocky to say the least. Most of it revolves around Lindros ripping up a bunch of posters Stewart gave to him to sign for charity. You can read excerpts of that column here from when Smitty blogged the original story. But today, Big E decided to lawyer up and fight against some of the defamatory claims made by Stewart which made him out to look like a “dickhead”.

Let me make one thing clear about where I stand on Eric Lindros. I get that he was a bit of a dick. I mean at 18-years-old he told the Quebec Nordiques to go fuck themselves because he wasn’t going to play for some weak ass French organization. He had a little self-entitled nature about him that was obviously going to rub some people the wrong way. But that’s just the way a bunch of these young guys are who have so much talent and hype surrounding them at 18, so you can’t fault Eric for that. And while all of that may be true, let me tell you who is a million trillion times worse than Eric Lindros ever was in his entire career. Paul Stewart.

This is what drives me insane about this whole situation. Nobody is talking about how awful that dick cheese, and Huffington Post for that matter, is. If anyone has self-entitlement issues here, it’s Paul Stewart. Oh cry me a fucking river that some NHLer told you to “shut the fuck up and drop the fucking puck” when you asked him about his dad. You’re the ref. Just shut your stupid face and do your job. This isn’t some social cocktail hour. And obviously everyone knows Big E had issues with his parents so that’s super fucked up of Paul Stewart to bring that up during a game. And sure, the ripping up posters for charity was a dick move on Lindros’ part, but I’m just gonna go ahead and believe he had no idea they were for charity. So there’s all the proof you need that Eric Lindros was’t a total dickhead like the article made him out to be. He probably thought those posters were for Stewarts’ personal Spank Bank collection, and quite frankly so do I.

Now I don’t know much about how the legal system works. I should actually probably learn a thing or two about slander and libel laws. But either way, my gut instinct is telling me that Eric Lindros deserves his $3 million. Paul Stewart deserves to get thrown in jail. Put Lindros in the Hall Of Fame and maybe the court can order him to adopt me. That’s what my gut instinct is telling me right now and I think we just proved that Law School is a waste of money.