Jury issues decision in defamation trial centered on comments made to East Idaho News
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Editor’s note: This article quotes editor Nate Sunderland and references reporter Kaitlyn Hart. Neither EastIdahoNews.com employee has edited or contributed to this story.
POCATELLO – A Bannock County jury has ruled in favor of an area attorney in a defamation trial over comments he made in 2022 to an EastIdahoNews.com reporter.
This decision brings the four day trial to an end and clears the lawyer of making defamatory statements. The jury deliberated for around two and a half hours, ultimately deciding that Patrick Davis, an attorney from Pocatello, did not defame Kristopher Taylor, an investor and business owner in the Idaho Falls area, when he was quoted in an article.
“It’s a high burden to prove that somebody made a statement that was provably false. And you know what? It should be,” said Rob Perucca, Davis’ defense attorney, in his closing statements. “We don’t want people walking around in fear that they say something negative about somebody else, that they’re going to be brought into a courtroom.”
When assessing damages, Taylor asked for between $100 to $300 per page view of the article. With the article receiving over 8,000 views, this would be anywhere from $800,000 to $2,400,000 in restitution. The jury also could have awarded Taylor for nominal damages for four statements made by Davis in the interview.
What led to the trial
This defamation lawsuit was filed by Taylor in response to comments Davis made to Kaitlyn Hart, an EastIdahoNews.com reporter, which she quoted in an article published on August 16, 2022. The story was reporting on embezzlement charges being dropped against Kevin Wayne Ball, a business partner of Taylor’s.
The primary quote from the article in contention was:
Ball’s defense attorney, Patrick Davis, told EastIdahoNews.com that Ball was being set up from the beginning.
“They ambushed the guy,” says Davis. “There’s a group of dudes in the Idaho Falls area who do this, where they’ll partner up with somebody who they see as unsophisticated, and they’ll embroil them in criminal proceedings to bilk them out of their interest in a company. It has happened before.”
Although Ball’s charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence, they were dropped without prejudice, meaning that the prosecutor could renew them if new evidence emerges. There are two pending civil cases concerning the dispute between Taylor and Ball, and both will go to trial next year.
Plaintiff’s arguments
Although never mentioned by name in the article, Taylor argued that he’s well known in the community for his business ventures and philanthropic endeavors. Because people knew that he and Ball were business partners, they recognized him as the unnamed business partner in the article, the plaintiff argued.
“(Taylor’s) reputation and his standing in the community are important to him, and they’re important to his family and friends. This case is about how that reputation was recklessly damaged by (Davis),” said one of Taylor’s attorneys, Vaughn Fisher, in his opening statement.
Taylor’s attorneys, Fisher and Jennifer Hanway, called around 10 witnesses, not including Taylor and Davis, to the stand to testify.
Through the testimony of Nate Sunderland, the managing editor of EastIdahoNews.com, the plaintiff was able to learn that the article received 8,156 total pageviews over a three day period in August 2022. People read the story for an average of one minute and 23 seconds.
Sunderland also explained the website’s policy on publishing in perpetuity.
“We see news as historical records that should be kept,” Sunderland said.
Many of the witnesses the plaintiff brought to the stand were people from the Idaho Falls community who read the article, some who didn’t personally know Taylor and others who did.
One who didn’t know Taylor was Brian Grossman, who said that he tried unsuccessfully to convince a friend of his who was working for Taylor to instead come work for him after he read the article.
“He didn’t need to be working for a thief or somebody that steals from somebody,” Grossman said in court as a witness for the plaintiff.
Miranda Smith, who knows Taylor because he employs her husband, testified about how the article made her concerned about her family’s future.
“If this is truly the type of person this is, is this someone we want to be involved with?” Smith recalled thinking at the time.
The plaintiff argued that the offered testimonies showed that Davis’ comments hurt Taylor’s reputation among people who did and didn’t know him.
Defense arguments
Davis took the stand to testify during the plaintiff’s case as well as his own, elaborating on the mindset he had approached his interview with. At the time, he didn’t realize he was being recorded, and thought they were “chewing the fat.”
He also thought he was just giving her background information, and that he would hear back from her before she ran a story.
“I wasn’t thinking hard about how I wanted to be quoted. I was just discussing the background of the case,” Davis said. “I was trying to fill her in on the story of the relationships between the people who were involved.”
Another clarification Davis made was that he didn’t use the words “set up” in the interview, and that he doesn’t believe Taylor became business partners with Ball with intent to “bilk” him out of the business.
Davis also clarified that the “group of dudes” he was referring to did not include Taylor.
“I don’t have any reason to think (Taylor) had done that before,” Davis said.
And while Davis didn’t go out and contact the press to talk about the case, he did want to defend his client in the public eye.
“Kevin’s whole life was ruined by having those stories out there, by having his mugshot out there,” Davis said. “I wanted him to have a chance to have a voice.”
Ball, who also took the stand to testify, spoke about how the article affected his reputation.
“It’s hard to go out and not feel like people recognize you for something that you’re being accused of,” Ball said.
The defense also called Michael Ramsden, a lawyer with 50 years of experience, to the stand, who addressed Davis’ interview with East Idaho News. In his eyes, the comments Davis made in the interview were appropriate given the context that he was providing Ball’s side of the story.
Parties react
Davis said he was relieved that the trial concluded.
“I agree with the jury’s verdict, and I’m looking forward to getting on with my life,” Davis said.
Fisher said that although Taylor had hoped for a different outcome, he was grateful for clarifications made in the trial.
“Mr. Taylor is disappointed in the outcome of the trial but feels vindicated that Mr. Davis testified that he was not referring to Mr. Taylor in the quote that was printed in the article in question,” Fisher said.
There are currently two ongoing civil cases between Taylor and Ball, each for one of the two businesses they were partners in and are both still shareholders in. One of these cases will go to trial in March and the other in June.