PEIAn oyster company owner has been granted a new trial after the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal found the original judge made two errors before finding him guilty of criminal harassment in November 2023.Justices say trial judge made errors during 2023 proceedings involving Robbie MooreCarolyn Ryan · CBC News · Posted: Aug 28, 2025 2:32 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours agoRobbie Moore, shown in this CBC News file photo from 2022, is getting a new trial related to allegations he criminally harassed three people from the same family over the course of 20 months. (Tony Davis/CBC)An oyster company owner has been granted a new trial after the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal found the original judge made two errors before finding him guilty of criminal harassment in November 2023. Robbie Moore, who owns MacMillan Point Oyster Farm in West Covehead, has already completed his sentence of 90 days in jail, served intermittently.”The trial judge erred in law by denying defence counsel an opportunity to conduct a cross-examination of a Crown witness on two issues related to the witness’ credibility, and for denying the admission of certain evidence on the basis it was hearsay,” Chief Justice James Gormley wrote in the decision, released Thursday.For that reason, the court overturned Moore’s conviction and ordered that a new trial be scheduled. “The difficulty to predict what the cross-examination may have elicited and what evidence it may have produced leads to the inescapable conclusion that the only just result is to order a new trial,” the ruling said. Fallout from shoreline workThe case led to Moore resigning as a councillor with P.E.I.’s Rural Municipality of North Shore, since the conviction on an indictable offence disqualified him from continuing to hold the position under the province’s Municipal Government Act. The Rural Municipality of North Shore includes the communities of West Covehead, Covehead Road, Stanhope, Pleasant Grove and Grand Tracadie. Aerial footage provided by Moore showed the area at the heart of the court case, with silty runoff spilling onto the shore and into the water near his oyster beds. (Submitted by Robbie Moore)The events that led to charges being laid against Moore happened over the course of 20 months between September 2021 and April 2023, and involved three members of the same family. “The charges arose as a result of [Moore] believing that the complainants had caused damage to his oyster lease which was located close to a new residential structure in MacMillan Point which is surrounded by… Brackley Bay,” the ruling said. In April 2022, Moore gave an interview to CBC News in which he said work being done on that site had destroyed the productivity of his 100-year-old oyster lease. I didn’t lose one year’s worth of crops, I lost eight years’ worth of crops of all stages and sizes.— Robbie Moore in 2022 interviewThe homeowners were fined $3,000 for cutting down all of the trees along the shoreline of their lot, but Moore said the fine didn’t fit the offence.”People don’t realize what it takes to grow oysters. It’s taken me five to eight years to harvest a crop,” he said at the time.”I didn’t lose one year’s worth of crops, I lost eight years’ worth of crops of all stages and sizes — you know, everything from baby oysters to jumbos. I was heartbroken.”Homeowners were asked if they had insuranceIn November 2023, the trial judge found Moore guilty, citing a pattern of “making complaints to authorities, filming [the homeowners] on their property, photographing them and following them in his vehicle, among other activities.”The judge pointed out that after one severe rainstorm, Moore arrived at the house and dumped dead oysters on the driveway, saying runoff caused by the site work had killed them.Moore, owner of MacMillan Point Oyster Farm in West Covehead, captured this image of the damage off MacMillan Point Road and shared it with CBC News in 2022. (Submitted by Robbie Moore)”Mr. Moore was upset, yelling and cursing throughout much of the interaction,” the court of appeals ruling noted. “Videos of these events capture the tone and content…. The [trial] judge noted specifically that during the exchange Mr. Moore said: ‘You got insurance on this property?'”During the trial, Moore’s lawyer argued that his actions were not criminal and cited the defence of property defence, as set out in Section 35 of the Criminal Code of Canada.On Thursday, court officials told CBC News the ruling means Moore’s case will go back on the docket and a new trial will be booked. ABOUT THE AUTHORCarolyn Ryan is the copy editor for CBC P.E.I.’s digital news operation. A graduate of the University of Prince Edward Island and the Carleton University School of Journalism, she has spent decades writing, editing and assigning other staff as a print, radio and digital journalist.
P.E.I. Court of Appeal orders new criminal harassment trial for oyster farmer
