The Defamation Case
An article was published that made people think I
had been negligent and unreasonable. (The article
was factually false, self-serving and defamatory.)
The article's author, Christopher Alba, was written a check for $1,665
by the Condominium Association directors and officers, so he was
hardly disinterested, and, I didn't see him do any work to earn the money.
The fact is that a structural engineer tested and showed that the
underlying problem was the privy pit, and I followed the structural
engineer's advice throughout. Alba wrote falsely when he said I had
ignored expert advise.
The other owners who deny it was a privy pit complained that the
insurance didn't cover privy pits and THEN said it was something else,
a broken sewer pipe... (and paid Alba the $1,665+/- instead of paying
their share of the excavation costs. To date they have not paid one
penny toward remediation, and have charged me $12,000+/- in legal
fees to have Sommer Law Firm say it was only a broken sewer. I wanted
that heard in court, but no. There was no hearing before my condo was
foreclosed and Rob Hunt's real estate agent, I have been told, was
allowed to use the lien for the legal fees to support his redemption after
buying my property at the foreclosure auction I didn't even know about.)
January 8, 2004, Judge Hall said that since the story was "opinion" it
was protected as Free Speech, and dismissed the case "for failure to
state a claim upon which relief could be granted."
He wouldn't let me produce evidence of the pit in court at the Rule 56
hearing to dismiss, and he didn't let me amend even though I'm pro se
because, he said, the jury instructions made amendment useless. But this
is NOT what the jury instructions case says. It says there is no value in
FALSE statements of fact and they are therefore NOT protected.
My reputation was ruined despite the fact I carefully did as the
structural engineer advised. The privy pit had to be dug out; during
digging it was found to have caused a sewer pipe to break. That pipe
would not have broken if it had not been laid over the pit which continued
to subside until there was a large cavity under the pipe: a tenant stood
on the ground above the pipe and cavity under it, and the pipe broke.
When I was a Realtor I had a good reputation; this article makes me
sound bad.
(Because I was the only one with a privy pit like that, people knew it was
me.)
