TLo secures dismissal and award of attorney’s fees in suit seeking prior restraint and return of county commissioner’s text messages
A judge has dismissed with prejudice a county’s lawsuit demanding a newspaper turn over a county commissioner’s text messages that the newspaper received from an anonymous source. The judge also refused to halt the newspaper’s reporting about the messages and said the county must pay the newspaper’s attorneys’ fees.
Escambia County, Florida, brought the case against the Pensacola News Journal, a Gannett-owned newspaper. The County asserted claims for replevin and conversion, alleging that the personal text messages of County Commissioner Jeff Bergosh had been stolen from the county by an unidentified third-party, and that the thief supplied a copy of the texts to the newspaper. The complaint – which came after the paper had reported on select text exchanges concerning the commissioner and public business – demanded that the paper turn over all its copies of the text messages and sought an injunction against future publications stemming from the texts.
Agreeing with arguments made by Thomas & LoCicero attorneys, Carol Jean LoCicero and Linda R. Norbut, the court found that the “County’s claims and relief sought are attempting to impose a prior restraint of speech on the press which, under these facts, runs afoul of the First Amendment.”
The court further noted that the County’s replevin and conversion claims were untenable because the County did not have a property or possessory interest in the texts, and that digital files are not the type of property that can be subject to such claims.
The court also granted TLo’s motion for an award of attorney’s fees under Florida’s anti-SLAPP statute, which are granted when a plaintiff’s claims are without merit and primarily based on First Amendment rights in connection with a public issue.
“Free speech won today,” LoCicero said in a statement to the News Journal. “Your government sued your local newspaper at the behest of one of your elected officials using your tax dollars. That’s all kinds of wrong. The judge recognized that, threw out the lawsuit, and is making the county reimburse the fees the paper expended defending itself from its own government.”
The case is styled Escambia County v. Gannett MHC Media, Inc., et al., No. 172023CC006519 (Escambia Cty. Ct. Aug. 8, 2024).
With offices in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, Thomas & LoCicero is a Florida-based law firm that is widely known, respected and committed to free speech and a free press. The firm represents leading electronic and traditional publishers. Thomas & LoCicero also counsels clients in a variety of industries in intellectual property, marketing and advertising matters and litigates business, defamation, trademark, copyright and privacy cases.
