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Jailed NHL player takes legal action against newspapers

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Mike Danton, the former Blues player sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison for orchestrating a failed murder-for-hire that was to take place during the Blues' final game last season, filed a notice of libel in Canadian court this week against two newspapers that suggested he was gay.

In the notice, Danton claims the Ottawa Sun and the Toronto Sun and their parent company were "false, defamatory and malicious" in their coverage of his April arrest. The notice preserves his right to sue.

At issue particularly is the headline: "NHLer Charged in Gay Hit Plot."

In the first few days of coverage of Danton's arrest for attempting a hit on his agent, several news services speculated that Danton was homosexual, perhaps because the criminal complaint, in an attempt to hide the target's identity, used language that implied a romantic same-sex relationship.

"That interpretation was incorrect," a lawyer for Sun Media, Alan Shanoff, said in today's edition of the Ottawa Citizen. "The Ottawa and Toronto Sun, just like many newspapers across North America, covered the wire service interpretation."