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Florida Judge Reverses $11.3M Award Over Defamatory Internet Posts
October 13, 2006
A Florida judge today set aside a jury award given on September 19 to a Florida woman in a defamation lawsuit. The jury had awarded $11.3 million to a Flordia woman who filed a defamation lawsuit against a Louisiana woman for posted "defamatory" messages about her on the Internet.
In a startling and unusual move, immediately after the jury announced its award, the judge requested that the public defender's office investigate the matter further. "It seemed unjust to allow this award to stand when the defendent -- a Hurricaine Katrina victim -- was unable to attend her own trial due to financial hardship," said an anonymous source in the Broward County public defender's office.
"It didn't take much investigating," the source added, "to learn that the plaintiff was a defendant in an earlier defamation lawsuit filed by a Utah corporation, and that information in those court transcripts lend credibility to a potential defense in this lawsuit."
The plaintiff in this latest defamation suit, Sue Scheff of Weston, Florida, was herself sued in 2004 by the Word Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS), a Utah corporation that runs boarding schools for troubled teenagers. Ms. Scheff and her organization, Parent's Universal Resource Experts (PURE) were sued by WWASPS for defamation and other charges in a Utah court. Ms Scheff was acquitted on all counts in that lawsuit. "But it was clear from those court transcripts," the spokesman said, "that Ms. Scheff admitted to some misrepresantations and factual errors on her web site."
The public defender's investigation also found that the owner of one of the boarding schools to which Ms. Scheff referred teenagers was recently the object of criminal charges involving hazing of children under her care. The case against Cheryl Sudweeks, owner of Whitmore Academy, was recently resolved when Ms. Sudweeks plead "no contest" and accepted a plea agreement to a lesser charge of "attempted hazing."
"It's not our job to try the defendant's case for her after the fact," said the source in the Broward County public defender's office. "But the judge felt this extraordinary judgement of $11.3 million was inappropriate, given the defendant's inability to attend the trial for financial reasons and given the legal record in the WWASPS vs. PURE case that lends credibility to the defendant's 'defamatory statements about Ms. Scheff."
Had the defendent been able to show up in court and mount a defense, the outcome might have been quite different. "It's only defamation if it's not true," said the anonymous source. "From the evidence we looked at, that is not at all obvious."
