This week’s Southern Oregon Government Watch contains both facts and opinions but overall should be considered an opinion column this week. In full disclosure the author is a defendant against a lawsuit filed against him by John West, who appears in this article. But like all the author’s articles over the last two years in the Grants Pass Tribune, the author stands by all statements which are presented as fact. John West, recalled by 62% of voters that cast a ballot in December 2024, has brought a lawsuit against four different individuals that supported his recall campaign. In our opinion, these are frivolous lawsuits that are trying to take away our constitutional rights to free speech. As of today’s publication date, no court of law has ever reviewed a claim made against a writer or article in the Grants Pass Tribune based on the merit of the claim and judged any such writing was false or defamatory.
Another chapter in what in our opinion is the short story compilation of frivolous local political lawsuits was concluded last Friday, May 29th. The first hearing at the local level was held for the latest frivolous lawsuit filed by recalled Josephine County Commissioner John West.
John West, recalled by a large margin in the December 2024 vote and now trying to become an elected county commissioner again this year, sued one of his political critics JJ Scofield in January of this year for $2 million for an obscure Facebook comment made a year later in December 2025. I couldn’t even find the Facebook post or comment earlier this year after the lawsuit was filed.
Friday afternoon, May 29th, this hearing was held on whether the case would be dismissed according to a motion to strike based on Oregon’s Anti-SLAPP laws. Oregon’s Anti-SLAPP laws are supposed to protect individuals from frivolous lawsuits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) intended to chill free speech and petitioning activities.
But so far, at the lower court level, Josephine County circuit court judges have been split about protecting our local free speech rights under the Anti-SLAPP motions filed in most of these cases in the early stages of defending these cases. I’m no attorney, but the bigger picture of what seems to be happening here is a reported multi-millionaire politician is throwing his money around and throwing a lawsuit at many local citizens who spoke out against his decisions and actions during the two years he was a commissioner.
In other words, a multi-millionaire thinks he can use his money to take away our free speech rights. In my opinion, these lawsuits are at their core a series of 1st Amendment free speech cases that are much larger than Josephine County.
As JJ Scofield’s attorney said in the hearing last Friday, “This is a classic SLAPP case.” Scofield’s attorney also reminded the Court, “Being a public official is not for the thin skinned.”
For those not keeping track at home, or like us having a hard time keeping track of the progress of the many local frivolous political lawsuits because they are great in number, this all actually started with commissioner candidate at the time Chris Barnett suing the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune for defamation. Then Commissioner John West sued the owner of the Grants Pass Tribune for defamation before he was recalled. Then Commissioner John West sued the recall’s chief petitioner Lily Morgan for defamation and false statements in the recall petition before the recall vote happened.
Then John West sued the Josephine County Clerk for the methods used to verify recall petition signatures. Then last summer when the statute of limitations was winding down, John West sued JJ Scofield and Jay Meredith (a couple of many of the leaders of the John West recall campaign) for $2 million dollars for defamation. Then West dropped JJ Scofield from that case and added additional allegations against Jay Meredith. Then a couple months later John West found another reason to sue JJ Scofield for $2 million (the now infamous Facebook comment where it seems hardly anyone ever viewed) and filed suit in January 2026.
Both “sides” of these cases, generally, have had wins at the lower court level, but all sides that didn’t completely prevail at the lower court level have indicated they intend to appeal. John West has already appealed every loss he has suffered at the local circuit court level.
John West’s political critics have insisted they never made any false statements, and have submitted reams of evidence and sworn declarations to support fact-based statements that West alleges are false. I’ve personally told a couple people recently that I’d put my hand on the Holy Bible and swear that I’ve never made a false statement of fact against John West in anything I’ve said or wrote.
The court of law hasn’t yet made any kind of determination that any of the defendants actually made false statements against recalled commissioner John West. And the frustrating part is that neither side will be able to fully declare victory for a long time, likely years in many of these cases.
First, for any such case where the defendant filed an Anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss, the Anti-SLAPP lawsuit (which is a completely separate lawsuit from ruling on the main case) needs to work its way through the appeals court process before the real lawsuit can actually be argued in court the traditional way. The Anti-SLAPP is simply a lawsuit process intended to protect individuals from these types of frivolous free speech type cases and the SLAPP lawsuit process does not even determine definitively whether the speech was in fact true or false in many cases.
As defendant Scofield’s attorney said last Friday, West never submitted any evidence of actual malice on Scofield’s part and in this Anti-SLAPP case “evidence isn’t weighed” as to the truthfulness of the statements in question. Scofield’s attorney argued that West has not proved that Scofield knew the statements he made were false or were made with “reckless disregard” and therefore this case should be dismissed based on Anti-SLAPP provisions of law.
West’s attorney on the other hand argued that the defendant “smeared Mr. West with [untrue] generalities” and had a pattern of behavior that demonstrated malice towards West. West attorney stated this was all part of a plan to recall Mr. West, which I found fascinating considering the Facebook comments in question were made close to 12 months AFTER voters recalled West from office. Not once in the hearing last week was it mentioned that the Facebook comments which solicited this lawsuit were actually made a full 12-months after West was recalled from office.
The judge in the case last Friday spent what felt like almost 20 minutes at the end of the 2-hour hearing effectively arguing in favor of JJ Scofield’s motion to dismiss under anti-SLAPP and elaborating on why. Then in a bizarre plot twist the judge proclaimed at the end of the hearing that he “cannot call this one way or another” and denied the motion to strike. And then the judge admitted that the record should be complete enough for the appeals court to make the call.
And in so punting to the appeals court, so much for the protection and swift justice that Oregon’s Anti-SLAPP law is supposed to afford politically active citizens that are facing these kinds of frivolous lawsuits.
As a reminder, in another lawsuit by John West against another political critic (the author of this article), JJ Scofield stated the following in a sworn declaration submitted to the court in that case: “While I was at the Grower’s Market last year spring or early summer, West approached me. He told me he intended to hurt me financially. He then said he was going to sue me for lying about him. I stated that I was not impressed by his threats and would get 15 people to all testify that I was telling the truth. He said it didn’t matter as I would spend so much on attorneys, I’d end up homeless. In my opinion West has followed up on that threat. He has sued anyone he blames for his recall ballot measure loss.”
And then several months later West ended up suing JJ Scofield for $2 million for a Facebook comment that hardly anyone seems to have viewed. Can you imagine what would happen if rich politicians across this County, State, and Country all sued their critics anytime they disagreed with a comment made on social media or anytime someone exercised their State constitutional right to file a recall petition and gather signatures?
As we reported last month, the “Elect John West” Facebook page released a statement about a month ago accusing the current Josephine County Board of Commissioners of violating law in three different ways and stating that they are “willing to violate the county charter.” No evidence was provided to support these serious allegations, and questions to John West about these statements once again went unanswered. And yet another statement was released by West the next day on Facebook saying it was his protected political speech to be making these statements.
In my opinion, this statement by John West on his Facebook page is many times worse than what appears to be a true or mostly true statement by Scofield last December on Facebook which resulted in a $2 million lawsuit by West. Why is it protected political speech when West says it on Facebook, but it’s a $2 million defamation case when a political critic of West says it on Facebook? Should the current County Commissioners sue West for $10 million for making these serious allegations against them on Facebook?
Of course not, that would also be ridiculous. But now, in my opinion, John West has dug himself a deeper hole…or the snowball of false statements by West is gaining size and momentum with every new frivolous lawsuit that is filed. West’s anti-recall campaign and now his new campaign for Josephine County Commissioner has been built on the sandy foundation of “my recall petition allegations were false” and so West is poised to continue the political lawfare.
This will, again in my opinion, work against John West. Because the more time that goes by, the more evidence surfaces that all the recall petition allegations against him were actually true.
On Monday this week, the Josephine County Commissioners fired the controversial IT/Emergency Management department head Michael Sellers who had been on paid administrative leave for almost 6 months pending a series of DOJ and other internal investigations. Mr. Sellers didn’t even show up for his due process hearing on Monday, and was therefore dismissed without arguing the pending internal investigation findings.
This was one of many issues John West was trying to defend against when the recall petition was filed, specifically worded in the recall petition as “Hired unqualified political allies for key County employee and contract positions.” The hiring of Mr. Sellers, which was done in the summer of 2023 by West and one other commissioner at the time without the support of the third commissioner, was cited as a key example of this recall petition statement.
As events unfolded in the next two years after he was hired, Mr. Sellers was found to have been working a full-time job for the State Legislature splitting work time between two State Senators while serving as the full-time director over these two busy Josephine County departments, was accused of being part of a destroying public records incident, accused of falsifying records (according to the Daily Courier), there were accusations of various policy violations, evidence surfaced from two internal whistleblowers that Mr. Sellers was temporarily promoted to a brand new Director of Operations position that had a total compensation package of about $388,000 per year, local media including the Grants Pass Tribune showed that Sellers embellished his resume, and more. Josephine County has not yet publicly released the summary results of internal investigations or the DOJ investigation involving Sellers, and may be hesitant to do so given our local litigious political environment of late.
At least three multi-million dollar lawsuits are now outstanding against Josephine County that directly or indirectly relate to former commissioner John West’s actions and votes before he was recalled from office. And each of these lawsuits relates to at least one of the recall petition points.
West has made the claim, even in his frivolous lawsuit against me personally, that I conspired to file a whole bunch of bogus ethics charges against him to get him recalled from office. I never filed a single ethics claim against him, nor did I work with anyone that did file an ethics charge prior to them filing what he says is more than 20 ethics charges with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. After the recall petition was filed and signature gathering began, I was frankly very surprised at how many ethics charges West said had been filed against him.
However, after repeatedly refusing to follow campaign finance law and admitting such on various video interviews West did during the recall campaign (which a local judge later confirmed the law violation), I did file one campaign finance violation report against John West in the month after voters recalled him from office. And the SOS Elections Division did in fact find John West was in violation of campaign finance law in their ruling later in 2025 which originated from my one and only official complaint.
I could go on and on about how as time goes on, more evidence surfaces about how all the John West recall petition statements of fact are actually true. However, also keep in mind that some of the recall petition statements were opinion-based statements which are still supposed to be protected free speech.
Again, these lawsuit battles feel much larger than just Josephine County. If our free speech rights can be so easily attacked by multi-millionaire politicians here in Josephine County, our free speech rights could be similarly attacked by rich politicians anywhere in Oregon or in the US.
But very few here in Josephine County are being overly vocal in the “town square” about these political lawsuits. Is it because they, too, are worried about being sued by John West I wonder?