On Thursday March 6th Judge Bain of the Josephine County Circuit Court released his decision and opinion letter related to the arguments between former Josephine County Commissioner John West (plaintiff) and Lily Morgan (defendant), the chief petitioner of the December 17th voter approved recall John West petition. The vast majority of the judge’s opinion letter and decision was bad for John West.
In my biased opinion (I worked in favor of the recall campaign), Judge Bain did a good job of doing a fact-based review of each recall petition point based on the arguments submitted to the court. The judge reviewed each point, decided whether that point was a fact-based statement or free speech protected opinion statement, and then ruled on whether any fact-based statement was in fact true based on information presented by both the plaintiff and defendant.
Recalled Commissioner John West’s case basically alleged that every single point in the recall petition was a false statement, and West’s attorney in the original February 7th hearing tried to make a dramatic case about the nature of the false statements (see here for the original report of the February 7th hearing). Judge Bain disagreed, ruling that every statement in the petition except one was either a true statement or was protected statement of opinion.
Defendant Lily Morgan’s attorneys made a motion to dismiss the case based on Oregon’s Anti-SLAPP statutes which protect free speech and help protect free speech from frivolous and costly lawsuits such as this one. If a defendant prevails with an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss, the case of the plaintiff is dismissed, and the plaintiff must usually pay the defendant’s legal fees.
As first reported by Chrissy Ewald of The Daily Courier on March 7th, chief petitioner Lily Morgan called the judge’s ruling a “win for freedom of speech and a win for our Oregon constitutional right to recall an elected official.” Both parties have the potential to appeal the judge’s decision and based on the judge’s discussion of the one single point where he ruled in West’s favor, I would predict that Lily Morgan will appeal that one point.
The only recall petition points of the six main recall petition points that the judge ruled in West’s favor was “Ignored the will of the voters by eliminating funding for community programs, including OSU extension, Law Enforcement, and Public Health.” The judge agreed with respect to the OSU extension part of this point, but didn’t find enough evidence in the declarations and information submitted to the court to rule that the Law Enforcement and Public Health portion of this statement was factually correct. From my personal perspective of the judge’s opinion letter, this is primarily because some declarations filed by West’s attorney were misleading on these points and not enough evidence was submitted yet to document this fact-based point without doubt. This will likely be clarified in what I see as a likely appeal on this point, and I’ll leave the details to the court process to follow.
Overall, I agree that this is definitely a win for free speech. The court of public opinion has weighed in loudly with the nearly 2-1 voter approval of the recall. And now the court of law has found that almost all points in the recall petition were either true or a matter of opinion protected by free speech laws. By the time this court case and any appeals are completed, I would say the odds are very good that Chief Petitioner Lily Morgan will win on each and every recall petition point.
This is a bad look, or as they say in political circles “bad optics” for former Commissioner John West, given that his anti-recall campaign strategy was to try and convince voters that every recall petition point was a false statement. Now a court of law has also proven West wrong.
West has also sued two other parties in relation to this recent recall petition, the County Clerk, for the method of verifying petition signatures and the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune for statements he published in relation to the recall (and a couple other things). The owner of the Grants Pass Tribune filed an additional suit against West, West’s attorney, Commissioner Chris Barnett, and a few others for a series of false statements and damaging actions against the owner of the GP Tribune. This legal ruling will likely compound West’s legal troubles regarding the cases with the GP Tribune owner.
West’s actions, legal and otherwise, are still increasing costs for Josephine County and West continues to ignore the will of voters. West has appealed his court loss in the case against the Josephine County Clerk for the recall signature verification process which unnecessarily increases the county’s legal expenses yet again. The County Clerk’s case appeared to be an easy decision by the judge and most thought it wouldn’t be appealed.
But West appears to be on the path of dragging out these legal cases as long as possible so he can once again ignore the will of voters and run for County Commissioner again next year. And so West has already appealed the decision related to the County Clerk’s signature verification process.
West has also attended and spoken at just about every County Commissioner Weekly Business Session since he was recalled from office, and in the weeks following the certification of the recall vote, sources say he spent practically more time in the County Courthouse than when he was actually a commissioner and was mostly having meetings with the new commissioners. If there was a clearer case of a local elected official ignoring the will of voters, I haven’t seen it in my 17 years of watching local government activities closely here in Josephine County.
