An out-of-court settlement has been reached resolving a defamation lawsuit involving Big Boy’s Toys near Parksville. The couple behind the lawsuit is speaking publicly for the first time since launching it.
The owners of the RV dealership sued a couple who bought a trailer in September 2022, only to have the couple go on a campaign using multiple social media platforms to claim they were sold a lemon.
Big Boys Toys sold the used RV to Markus Willard for around $50,000.
All appeared to be fine, but on a trip in the U.S. with their children in tow, Willard and his wife, Lisa Redl, discovered mold.
The couple then started a campaign of complaints, with more than 100 online saying Big Boys Toys sold them a lemon.
“They started from December ’22 til about a month ago a barrage of lies and deceits about myself and my family and about the dealership,” said Ian Moore, the owner of Big Boy’s Toys.
His wife, Shannon Moore, who also works at the dealership, says the online attacks were personal and hurtful.
“Being called gangsters. That we prey on young families. That we have a history of selling lemons that extends about 20 years,” said Shannon. “It was on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Yelp.”
The dealership lost sales as a result, and for the first time in the company’s history, it decided to sue a customer for defamation.
The action was launched in June 2023, and this week, a mediator helped them reach a settlement.
Willard and Redl agreed to delete all their social media posts about Big Boy’s Toys and replace them with a two-minute recorded apology for no less than a year.
“We improperly lashed out at Big Boy’s Toys Limited and its owners, Ian and Shannon Moore, because we wrongly assumed that they had sold us a lemon,” said Redl in the recorded video.
“In hindsight, we realize that we had not properly maintained the RV and that, in fact, it was in good condition when we bought it,” said Willard in the recorded video.
The Moores say the situation has taken a huge emotional toll on them and their employees, and they want people to be more careful about their words on social media.
“Be careful how you express yourself and where you do it and how you do it and what you say and ensure that it’s truthful and honest,” said Shannon.
CHEK News reached out to Lisa and Markus, and they said they could only forward their recorded apologies and a prepared statement due to the settlement.
The prepared statement follows unedited:
[1] Over the course of the past 15 months, my wife Lisa Marie Redl and I published statements on various social media sites and customer review platforms about a recreational vehicle we purchased from Big Boy’s Toys Ltd. in Nanoose Bay, British Columbia.
[2] We now accept that the information we published about Big Boy’s Toys Ltd. – and the company’s principals, Ian and Shannon Moore – was defamatory and untrue.
[3] We take this opportunity to make amends by retracting our statements about them and offering our sincere apologies for ever having made them.
[4] We acknowledge that in publishing the defamatory and untrue statements, we caused significant damage to the reputations of Mr. and Mrs. Moore and Big Boy’s Toys Ltd. We genuinely regret having done so.
[5] We were wrong, and we take full responsibility for our improper actions.
[6] We have voluntarily removed the statements from our social media sites and the messaging platforms where they were published.
[7] Due to our conduct, Mr. and Mrs. Moore and Big Boy’s Toys Ltd. commenced an action against us in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. We have agreed to compensate them for the costs they incurred in that proceeding and further, to pay them a sum of money to be applied to a charity of their choice.
[8] The defendants will post and, where possible, pin this written retraction and apology, and the video apology given today, on the defendants’ profiles and the profiles they control where the defamatory statements were published, and the defendants will maintain this written retraction and apology and the video apology in the “public” setting of each of their profiles on their social media platforms until 26 March 2025.
Dated at Vancouver this 26 day of March 2024.
Kendall Hanson
