• Article by: ABBY SIMONS
• Star Tribune
• August 20, 2012 - 11:14 AM
The Minnesota Court of Appeals overturned a $60,000 award a local blogger was ordered to pay for a post that got a man fired, claiming that the blogger cannot be found liable for interfering if the information is true and protected under the First Amendment.
The decision issued Monday in a case that garnered attention from free-speech advocates came a year and a half after a Hennepin County jury said that Minneapolis blogger John "Johnny Northside" Hoff owed Jerry Moore $60,000 in damages for a scathing post on his well-read blog, "The Adventures of Johnny Northside." The post resulted in Moore's firing from the University of Minnesota.
The jury decided that Hoff told the truth in his post when he accused Moore of being involved in a "high-profile fraudulent mortgage," but found that his actions amounted to actively interfering with Moore's employment contract. Hoff challenged the verdict and moved for a judgment or a new trial.
The Appeals Court sided with Hoff, reasoning that he cannot be held liable for interfering with Moore's contract with the U if the information is true, regardless of his motivation for doing so, and ordered the case sent back to district court for judgment in Hoff's favor.
"When a person conveys unflattering and possibly damaging information to another person's employer, it is unlikely that the motivation for conveying that information is borne out of affection," Judge Jill Flaskamp Halbrooks wrote. "It is much more likely that the intent is for the employer to take responsive action -- up to and including termination -- based on the content of that information. Regardless of the motivation of the messenger, if the information conveyed is true, it is not appropriate for liability to attach."
The lawsuit stemmed from a feud between Moore, former director of the Jordan Area Community Council (JACC) in north Minneapolis, and Hoff, a neighborhood activist. After Moore's firing from the Jordan Area Community Council, he was hired in 2009 at the U's Urban Research and Outreach/Engagement Center to study mortgage foreclosures.
When Hoff found out, he wrote a post accusing Moore of being involved in a "high-profile fraudulent mortgage," one of several that resulted in a 16-year prison sentence for former real estate agent Larry Maxwell. Moore was not criminally charged in the Maxwell case, although he is currently named as one of several defendants in a lawsuit related to the fraud.
"The collective judgment of decent people in the Jordan neighborhood -- 'decent' being defined as 'not actively involved in mortgage fraud' -- is that Jerry Moore is the last person who should be working on this kind of task, and WHAT THE HELL was the U of M thinking by hiring him," Hoff wrote in the June 21, 2009, post. Among the comments was a copy of an e-mail sent by another North Side resident and blogger, Don Allen, to the university urging Moore's termination and suggesting that he would publicize Moore's background if his suggestion wasn't met. Moore was fired the next day. Moore sued Hoff and Allen in 2009. Allen settled before trial and testified against Hoff.
In the opinion, Flaskamp Halbrooks wrote that Hoff's blog post, which is protected under the First Amendment, was too intertwined with his other actions to find him liable for Moore's firing without violating his constitutional rights.
"Hoff's blog post is the kind of speech that the First Amendment is designed to protect," she wrote. "He was publishing information about a public figure that he believed was true (and that the jury determined was not false) and that involved an issue of public concern." Abby Simons • 612-673-4921
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