PHILADELPHIA – A federal court has found that it does in fact have personal jurisdiction over a state court judge’s defamation claims against online news outlet The Daily Beast – which she said damaged her standing as a jurist when it printed that she was aligned with the QAnon group – but granted the conditional dismissal of the judge’s false light claim.
The Honorable Paula A. Patrick first filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on April 20, 2022 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 in August 2021 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, 2021, 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 said.
“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 added 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 stated.
“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 in 2021.
The Daily Beast and Bradley motioned to dismiss the case on June 17, 2022, standing by the story it printed and countering that Patrick’s false light claims fare no better than the first case she filed connected to these events, in state court.
“The Daily Beast article accurately summarized the two reasons why Judge Patrick recently had garnered substantial public attention. First, in the midst of her campaign for a seat on Pennsylvania’s high court, Judge Patrick gave a lengthy YouTube interview to a QAnon-affiliated talk show host whom she referred to as ‘Prophetess.’ During the interview, Judge Patrick told the Prophetess, ‘I love you guys, and I’m so happy to have met you…you guys are tremendous, and I thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to your audience,” the defendants said.
“During the interview, the Prophetess noted that Judge Patrick was considering attending an upcoming QAnon-affiliated conference, and Judge Patrick responded, ‘Yes.’ Judge Patrick also told The Philadelphia Inquirer that she had been introduced to the Prophetess by Mark Taylor, a QAnon leader who calls himself a ‘Prophet,’ and explained that he had been trying to help her with her Supreme Court campaign. Towards the end of the interview, the Prophetess showed a campaign ad for Judge Patrick, apparently supplied by her campaign. Judge Patrick subsequently appeared on a list of featured speakers for the QAnon-affiliated conference, ‘Patriots Arise, Awakening the Dead!’ But apparently she had second thoughts, later telling The Inquirer that she would not be attending and stating, ‘There’s no way I would link myself to anything that would be questionable like that.”
Due to this link and the lack of malice associated with the writing of the original article, the defendants argued that Patrick’s claims failed on the merits.
Counsel for Patrick responded to the dismissal motion on June 27, 2022, retorting that the defendants effectively admitted it was their belief that she was in fact a QAnon-linked judge, when that is not the case.
“In a direct attack upon Judge Patrick’s core integrity as a jurist, they fabricate a connection between that (phantom) [QAnon] link and her ruling in a case regarding a statue of Christopher Columbus – not only in the headline but in the lede, then in successive paragraphs – thus repeatedly suggesting the ruling was not based on the law and facts, but was a biased and/or corrupt one based on this asserted QAnon affiliation,” plaintiff counsel said.
“They contend, however, that what they have published is insulated from suit as protected opinion. They are wrong. In the first place, it is well-established that simply labeling something as opinion – even in the publication at issue, let alone retrospectively in a Court filing – does not make it so, and these attacks on Judge Patrick are not opinions but assertions of fact. Moreover, even assuming for the sake of argument they are opinions, they would not meet the standards to render them immune from suit as protected opinions, in any event.”
Patrick’s counsel found the defense’s invitation to the Court to decide, at this early point, “the issue of truth or falsity as a matter of law” as both “extraordinary” and “untenable.”
“As well-pleaded in the complaint, [these deeply disparaging assertions] are not true, they are false, and nothing in defendants’ highly selective, misleading and improper efforts to present a different version of facts at bar does or can justify any contrary conclusion, let alone as a matter of law. Indeed, as in all their arguments for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6), this argument does not even address plaintiff’s actual claim, fundamentally, at all,” the response stated.
UPDATE
On March 20, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Joshua D. Wolson decreed that the Court did have jurisdiction over the case at issue, but granted the defendants’ attempt to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, with respect to false light.
“Defendants’ article about Judge Patrick has a local focus, despite The Daily Beast’s national audience. The article’s headline focuses on the actions of a local elected official – a state court trial judge. The article concerns the Pennsylvania activities of Pennsylvania residents, including the Friends of Marconi Plaza and Judge Patrick, and it discusses a local issue – a lawsuit to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus in a public park in South Philadelphia. Ms. Bradley drew from local Pennsylvania news sources to craft the article, including: (1) The Philadelphia Inquirer, (2) CBS Philadelphia, and (3) 6ABC Action News. Defendants spent a portion of the article reporting on Judge Patrick’s alleged QAnon-related ‘drama’ and noted that Judge Patrick ‘unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the state Supreme Court earlier [that] year,” Wolson said.
“In light of all of this, I have little trouble concluding that defendants knew that the article would be damaging to Judge Patrick’s reputation in Pennsylvania and, therefore, expressly aimed their tortious conduct at Pennsylvania. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a jurisdiction more targeted by the article than Pennsylvania. As such, all three elements of the Calder effects test are satisfied, and the Court may exercise specific jurisdiction over defendants.”
Wolson stated that while there is “no objective way to prove what Judge Patrick was thinking when she ruled on the Columbus statue dispute and thus, this speculation could not support a claim for false light”, he continued that “the defendants’ characterization of Judge Patrick as ‘QAnon-linked’ is an actionable expression of fact.”
Thus, Wolson granted the dismissal of such an expression from the case.
“Perhaps, if defendants had referred to Judge Patrick as a ‘QAnon Judge,’ that characterization might have amounted to an expression of opinion that is unprovable as false. But defendants went further and described Judge Patrick as being QAnon-linked. That linkage is a factual assertion in its own right, connecting her to the QAnon movement in some way. Though the parties are likely to dispute what it means to be “linked” to a group or ideology, the fact of being linked to something is not so vague as to be rendered unprovable as false. In addition, a person is either linked to something or not, even if that linkage might vary in degree. Because the fact of Judge Patrick’s alleged ‘link’ to QAnon may be proved as false, she can maintain a false light claim based upon defendants’ characterization of her,” Wolson said.
“That said, the ultimate issue of whether Judge Patrick is linked to QAnon is for a finder of fact to decide, and I decline defendants’ invitation to look beyond the complaint to resolve their defense in this matter. Likewise, I will not convert defendants’ motion into a motion for summary judgment. Given the allegations in the complaint and the article, it is plausible that it is false that Judge Patrick is QAnon-linked. Nevertheless, I will dismiss the case because Judge Patrick has not pled any facts that make it plausible that defendants acted with actual malice when they described her as a QAnon-linked Judge. It is not enough that Judge Patrick made the bald assertion that defendants published the article while knowing it was false. Instead, she must offer some facts that might make that allegation plausible. At best, she alleges that ‘defendants had knowledge of, or acted in reckless disregard as to, the falsity of the matter they communicated…” But that allegation is not plausible in the absence of any facts to support it.”
Wolson concluded that “absent allegations of fact that make it plausible that defendants acted with actual malice when they described Judge Patrick as a QAnon-linked judge, Judge Patrick cannot state a claim for false light under Pennsylvania law.”
Yet, Wolson added that if Judge Patrick has a good faith basis to amend her pleading as to the defendants’ alleged malice, then she may file an amended complaint on or before April 3.
But if she does not file an amended complaint by that time, Wolson said, the Court will “assume that Judge Patrick intends to stand on the allegations in her current complaint and will enter an order dismissing this matter with prejudice.”
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. and Dion G. Rassias of The Beasley Firm, in Philadelphia.
The defendants are represented by Kaitlin M. Gurney, Leslie Minora and Seth D. Berlin of Ballard Spahr, in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
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