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Appeals court affirms Devin Nunes’ loss in defamation suit

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 07:16:48 +0000

Former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., applauds in the audience as former President Donald Trump announces he is running for president for the third time as he speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

A federal appeals court in Iowa handed Devin Nunes another loss in his defamation suit against journalist Ryan Lizza and Hearst Magazines over a 2018 Esquire article that said the Nunes family’s dairy farm knowingly employed undocumented immigrants after a lower court judge determined that the story was “substantially, objectively true.”

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Monday affirmed the lower court’s ruling which granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, reasoning that the former Republican congressman-turned-Truth Social CEO and his family’s dairy farm failed to provide any evidence that the article caused monetary damage.

The former California congressman, who has waged numerous unsuccessful (so far) lawsuits over the years — perhaps most infamously against the Twitter accounts Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom — first filed suit against Lizza and Hearst in September 2019. The complaint alleged that Politico’s Lizza, then an independent contractor reporting for Esquire, defamed the congressman with actual malice and conspired to publish the “hit piece” headlined “Devin Nunes’s Family Farm is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret.”

A second defamation lawsuit was filed on behalf of the dairy farm itself, NuStar Farms, Anthony Nunes Jr. and Anthony Nunes III, Devin Nunes’ father and brother, on Jan. 16, 2020. The cases were consolidated in February 2022.

The plaintiffs attempted to show that it was defamatory of Lizza to write — and for Esquire to publish — that the Nunes family, which “owned and operated a dairy farm in Tulare, California for more than a century,” had “knowingly” employed undocumented immigrants, despite then-President Donald Trump’s hard-line stance on illegal immigration and the then-GOP congressman’s support for Trump and his immigration policies.

In the lower court ruling, the presiding judge found that Nunes and the farm likely knew that at least some of the farm laborers were not legally in the country.

“Despite the fact that NuStar plaintiffs legally needed to obtain verification from prospective employees through unexpired documents, they accepted expired cards, at least some of which explicitly stated when they expired,” Williams wrote. “For instance, the state identification card one worker presented to them had an expiration date on it, as did some of the resident cards and permanent resident cards.”

In affirming the lower court’s ruling, the panel reiterated that Nunes had claimed the article “impaired his future career opportunities, impacted his ability to raise funds, and damaged his election campaign for Congress in 2018.” However, the court then emphasized that Nunes won his 2018 reelection campaign and accumulated more than double the amount of money from donations in the two years after the article was published (over $26 million) than the two years prior to its publication (nearly $13 million).

The court further found that the Esquire article didn’t appear to harm Nunes’ employment prospects.

“Nunes also failed to present sufficient evidence that the article impaired his prospects for employment,” the ruling states. “The only evidence regarding Nunes’s employment shows that after he retired from Congress, he became the chief executive officer of Trump Media & Technology Group, Corp., with a starting salary of $750,000. The job, Nunes admits, was secured ‘based on the strength of Congressman Nunes’s reputation.’ Nunes thus did not produce evidence to support his allegation that he suffered economic loss as a result of the article.”

The panel similarly tossed the dairy farm’s case, noting that the establishment also did not provide the court with any proof that it suffered financial or reputational losses aside from claiming that one unnamed person stopped doing business with the farm as a result of the article.

“But the NuStar plaintiffs failed to produce evidence that the suggested business relationship existed, let alone that the other party discontinued the association. This bare assertion of lost business is insufficient to establish a cognizable injury,” the panel wrote. “Because they presented no evidence of a preexisting good reputation that could have been damaged by the article, the NuStar plaintiffs failed to create a genuine dispute for trial about whether they suffered a cognizable injury.”

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Personal injury firm sues TD Bank after loss in fraud scheme

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 01:20:49 +0000

Law Firms

Personal injury firm sues TD Bank after loss in fraud scheme

By Debra Cassens Weiss

August 29, 2024, 12:19 pm CDT

A personal injury law firm has filed a lawsuit blaming TD Bank for its loss of about $146,000 in a check fraud scam. (Image from Shutterstock)

A personal injury law firm has filed a lawsuit blaming TD Bank for its loss of about $146,000 in a check fraud scam.

The July 23 suit, removed to New Jersey federal court Monday, alleges that TD Bank should have warned New Jersey firm Nagel Rice about the cashier’s check that it deposited from a bank called BBVA because of a history of fraudulent checks claiming to be drawn from that institution.

Law.com has the story.

According to the suit, Nagel Rice received a cashier’s check for $148,950 from a purported client supposedly drawn from BBVA and deposited it in the firm’s account with TD Bank on Nov. 23, 2020. About two days later, Nagel Rice wired $146,250 to the bank account of the purported client.

On Dec. 1, 2020, Nagel Rice received a letter in regular mail from TD Bank dated Nov. 25, 2020. The letter advised Nagel Rice that the cashier’s check had bounced. Nagel Rice lost the entire amount wired to the client.

The suit alleges that the bank was negligent because of its failure to warn, and it violated a contractual banking relationship in which it agreed to safeguard Nagel Rice accounts.

Law.com described Nagel Rice as a high-profile personal injury firm that has many top verdicts and settlements in a list published by the New Jersey Law Journal.

Many other firms have lost money in similar scams, including several in New Jersey. The FBI warned about such scams in 2010, telling lawyers to beware of cients who make contact only by email, especially if they reside in foreign countries.

In one version of the scam, a purported client wants help collecting a debt, but the matter is quickly settled and the firm receives a phony check for the settlement money. The firm keeps a fee and wires the rest to the supposed client, only to find out later that the check has bounced.

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Lawyer mistakenly filed ‘verbatim copy’ of opponent’s brief, leading to loss for Romantics band member

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 18:10:46 +0000

Trials & Litigation

Lawyer mistakenly filed ‘verbatim copy’ of opponent’s brief, leading to loss for Romantics band member

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 5, 2024, 8:20 am CST

Bassist Mike Skill performs with the Romantics during the Little Stevens Underground Garage concert poolside at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on April 2, 2006, in Hollywood, Florida. (Photo by Ralph Notaro/Getty Images)

A trial court did not abuse its discretion when it required a member of the rock band the Romantics to pay triple damages after his new attorney filed a “verbatim copy” of the opponent’s brief by mistake, the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled.

The appeals court ruled against the Romantics guitarist Mike Skill in a lawsuit alleging that he wrongly diverted royalty payments to himself.

Law360 has coverage.

The trial judge had ordered Skill to pay triple damages of more than $232,300, as requested by the plaintiffs in their motion for summary disposition. The appeals court affirmed in a Feb. 29 unpublished opinion.

Skill co-wrote the song “What I Like About You,” according to Law360.

Skill’s lawyer intended to file an opposition to the plaintiff’s motion for summary disposition, the appeals court said. Instead, the June 2022 brief was a cut-and-paste of the plaintiff’s brief in support of summary disposition, signed by Skill’s lawyer, who was not named in the opinion.

The new attorney said a paralegal had filed the wrong brief. It was filed on the extended deadline day for a response to the summary disposition request. Skill’s lawyer tried to file an amended brief the next day, but the trial judge apparently rejected it.

The judge granted summary disposition to the two plaintiffs—a company formed to manage business affairs for the band known as Master Beat Inc. and fellow band member Walter Palamarchuk, who goes by the stage name Wally Palmar.

The trial court reasoned that it could reject the new brief and award summary disposition to the plaintiffs based on timely filings before the court. The trial judge also said evidence established Skill’s liability for conversion, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment.

Palamarchuk was president of Master Beat, and Skill was secretary-treasurer. The company had contractual agreements requiring the payment of royalties to Master Beat, which would then distribute royalties to past and present band members under various contractual agreements.

Skill thought that he was entitled to royalties without the money first passing through Master Beat, and he took steps to divert royalties to himself in late 2020, the suit alleged.

There is some evidence, the appeals court said, that Skill apparently received about $26,700 in royalties directly from Sony Music Publishing and $30,000 in royalty payments from K-Tel International before Master Beat became aware of it. The evidence, however, isn’t entirely clear from the record, the appeals court said. There is also some evidence that Skill withdrew $20,000 from a bank account belonging to Master Beat in July 2021, thinking that he was entitled to the money.

The lawyer who filed the wrong brief had taken over in May 2022 from a previous lawyer who sought to withdraw on the alleged ground that Skill had not paid his legal bills. The new lawyer blamed the filing mistake on the short time frame between the time that she came aboard and the due date for the response, on her own illness as the deadline approached, and on her paralegal’s failure to file the brief prepared by Skill’s former lawyer as instructed.

On the merits, Skill’s lawyer argued that he could not convert funds that already belonged to him.

“Under these circumstances,” the appeals court said, “defendant has not demonstrated that the trial court abused its discretion by declining to permit the filing of a corrected brief after the deadline imposed by the scheduling order had passed. … Furthermore, on the record before the trial court in light of the lack of a properly and timely filed responsive brief, the trial court did not err by granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary disposition.”

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