PHILADELPHIA – A sitting Philadelphia judge has brought legal action against online news outlet The Daily Beast, charging it defamed her and damaged her standing as a jurist, when it printed that she was aligned with the QAnon group.
The Honorable Paula A. Patrick filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on April 20 versus The Daily Beast Company, LLC (doing business as “The Daily Beast”) and its reporter Laura Bradley, both of New York, N.Y.
It all began when the plaintiff, Patrick, a judge in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, ruled last summer that a controversial statue of explorer Christopher Columbus would remain in South Philadelphia’s Marconi Plaza, reversing earlier calls to remove the statue from public view.
The statue remains there currently, obscured from public view in a plywood box.
It became a source of controversy and a focus of racial injustice protesters in the summer of 2020, during social unrest in Philadelphia, after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Many in Philadelphia, a city with a large Italian-American community, said that the statue represented their ancestry. However, others claimed that Columbus and the statue which honors him is a symbol of racism and oppression.
Violent clashes took place between the statue’s defenders and protesters at Marconi Plaza in June 2020, resulting in police responding to the scene in order to control the crowd.
Though the Philadelphia Historical Commission and the City of Philadelphia Board of License and Inspection Review both decided in favor of the statue’s removal, Patrick ruled that the City’s grounds for removal were legally flawed.
On Oct. 9 of last year, defendant The Daily Beast subsequently published an article on the case, authored by its reporter Bradley, with the headline, “QAnon Linked Judge Rules in Unhinged War Over Philly’s Columbus Statue”.
QAnon is an overarching term for a group of Internet conspiracy theories which claim the world is run by an organization of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, and that such individuals include President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, Hollywood celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and Ellen DeGeneres, in addition to religious figures like Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama.
Patrick vehemently denied any connection to the QAnon group or their beliefs.
“The Daily Beast defendants specifically penned this malicious article for distribution and publication in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania so as to maximize the impact on Judge Patrick and stain her reputation as a jurist in Philadelphia County. The Daily Beast’s knowingly false and intentionally misleading headline is defamatory and was done to harm Judge Patrick, whose politics apparently do not align with those of the Daily Beast defendants,” the suit says.
“The Daily Beast defendants used this knowingly false ‘QAnon link’ to punish a female, conservative African-American jurist for following the law and procedures related to the management of artwork in Philadelphia, as opposed to furthering its own agenda. The Daily Beast’s article was done to compromise Judge Patrick’s standing as a highly-regarded, honest and reputable jurist, in its own politically and woke-motivated attempt to further its own goals to cancel relevant history, by placing Judge Patrick in a false light with regards to her conduct as a jurist and her decision making related to a controversial issue of public import.”
The suit adds Patrick has “suffered significant and permanent damages for the false light into which these articles have placed her.”
“In spite of widely available information and reporting that Judge Patrick was not affiliated with or otherwise ‘linked’ to QAnon, the Daily Beast defendants failed to properly investigate the outrageous claims attempting to link a well-respected jurist to a crackpot and unhinged conspiracy group known as QAnon; this failure has resulted in a permanent stain on her otherwise well-regarded and respected reputation, and anyone who searches Judge Patrick will be confronted with the false light presentation that Her Honor is somehow linked to, and therefore guided by, these QAnon lunatics,” the suit states.
“Aside from a clear disregard for due diligence, the Daily Beast defendants’ publications is a malicious attack upon the character of a dedicated public servant. It is an unfortunate, but all too accurate, statement to say that these defendants value reckless, provocative articles in spite of knowing the truth. The false light into which Judge Patrick has been placed by these defendants has also caused significant professional, personal and emotional damages and harm to her. To the average reader, Judge Patrick is now forever linked to QAnon, as intended by these defendants.”
Patrick, an attorney since 1994 and judge since 2003, also launched an unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania last year.
For a count of false light, the plaintiff is seeking damages jointly, severally and/or individually, in an amount substantially in excess of the jurisdictional limit, compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, costs and interest, together with any further relief which this Court deems just and appropriate under the circumstances.
The plaintiff is represented by James E. Beasley Jr. of The Beasley Firm, in Philadelphia.
The defendants have not yet secured legal counsel.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:22-cv-01520
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com