Chris Morin and Jennifer Clark of the firm’s Tampa office obtained Affirmance in Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal following the Final Order of Dismissal with Prejudice they obtained in December 2020. The case in which MMH handled the underlying litigation as well as the appeal involved a defamation complaint Plaintiff, a former assistant chief of police, filed against a police union and its president for comments made about the Plaintiff on social media in connection with a viral video of the Plaintiff. With this case and other similar cases, MMH attorneys have been perfecting legal arguments in opposition to defamation claims which are strategically targeted to substantially limit allegations and establish strong grounds for dismissal or summary judgment. The court in this case agreed with the defense position that the comments were “pure opinion” and fair commentary on the depiction of the Plaintiff in the video. The court found that there were no pertinent facts omitted from the comments and, therefore, none of the alleged defamatory statements was actionable under defamation law. This was a hard-fought case in which the court granted Plaintiff multiple opportunities to amend the complaint to allege false statements of fact that would be actionable, but failed to do so. Due to early service of proposals for settlement that were rejected by Plaintiff, Defendants are now in a position to obtain judgment in their favor for reimbursement of fees and costs from Plaintiff.
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Chris Morin and Jennifer Clark of the firm’s Tampa office obtained Affirmance in Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal following the Final Order of Dismissal with Prejudice they obtained in December 2020. The case in which MMH handled the underlying litigation as well as the appeal involved a defamation complaint Plaintiff, a former assistant chief of police, filed against a police union and its president for comments made about the Plaintiff on social media in connection with a viral video of the Plaintiff. With this case and other similar cases, MMH attorneys have been perfecting legal arguments in opposition to defamation claims which are strategically targeted to substantially limit allegations and establish strong grounds for dismissal or summary judgment. The court in this case agreed with the defense position that the comments were “pure opinion” and fair commentary on the depiction of the Plaintiff in the video. The court found that there were no pertinent facts omitted from the comments and, therefore, none of the alleged defamatory statements was actionable under defamation law. This was a hard-fought case in which the court granted Plaintiff multiple opportunities to amend the complaint to allege false statements of fact that would be actionable, but failed to do so. Due to early service of proposals for settlement that were rejected by Plaintiff, Defendants are now in a position to obtain judgment in their favor for reimbursement of fees and costs from Plaintiff.
