The mother of a severely disabled Nova Scotia man has been ordered to pay a former nurse $60,000 in damages for defamatory online posts that a judge says were aimed at destroying the nurse's reputation.

In the same ruling, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Denise Boudreau was highly critical of a government investigation and report that was the basis of the Facebook posts, calling it devoid of methodology or procedural fairness to the extent of being "entirely inconclusive." 

"The plaintiff is a …