Georgia poll workers seek to enjoin Rudy Giuliani | Strictly Legal
Two Florida poll workers have asked a bankruptcy court to enjoin Rudy Giuliani from continuing to make statements previously ruled defamatory in their libel suit against him. Given the previous ruling, the poll workers argue the court may enjoin Giuliani without violating the First Amendment.
The two poll workers – Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss – had previously sued Giuliani in a libel suit in the District of Columbia. In that case, according to the filing in the bankruptcy court, Guiliani was held liable, for claiming Freeman and Moss “deliberately threw people out and counted the ballots in private[;]” and “counted [ballots] more than one time—three, four, five, six, seven times, eight times.”
Undeterred, Giuliani emerged from the first day of the libel trial telling reporters his statements were “all true.” Following the verdict, Freeman and Moss filed an action for an injunction to stop Giuliani from continuing to make such statements. But Giuliani filed for bankruptcy in New York, and that filing automatically stayed the D.C. proceeding.
Freeman and Moss have now asked the bankruptcy court to stop Giuliani from repeating the statements which have already been deemed defamatory. And they are pulling no punches. In their complaint, they contend “[u]ndeterred by facts, logic, decency, professional discipline, court orders in multiple jurisdictions, a criminal indictment, a multimillion dollar jury verdict, or declaring bankruptcy as a result, Giuliani has entered year four of intentionally defaming Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss—repeating the very same lies that Plaintiffs engaged in fraud during their service as election workers during the 2020 presidential election.” The complaint continues “[c]ontrary to his delusions of grandeur, the law does apply to Mr. Giuliani, and it is beyond time to make him follow it.”
Freeman and Moss claim in their complaint that Giuliani has repeated the defamatory statement on a number of occasions, including:
On Jan. 8, Giuliani appeared on his second Twitter live cast, America’s Mayor Confidential, and said: “I was not allowed to put it in a defense. I was not allowed to take the videos of the women of the woman, one of the women, I had a clear video of her quadruple and triple-counting the same ballots. You can look at it 100 times you can analyze it 50 ways to Sunday that’s exactly what she was doing.”
On April 30, Giuliani appeared on America’s Mayor Live and showed clips of security footage from State Farm Arena. He told viewers: “So they take the ballots and they put it in. The ballots get finished, they take them out. And they’re supposed to do that with it. They put them in again. And they do it four times.”
Injunction in libel suits are tricky. On the one hand, courts are reluctant to impose any type of injunctive relief for fear of imposing a “prior restraint.” A prior restraint shuts down speech before it is even uttered. In our tradition, courts do not want to stifle speech. The preferred remedy is to assess liability after the fact. This avoids shutting down protected speech or creating a “chilling effect.” But once a jury has heard the specific statements and found the defendant liable for defamation, a court can enjoin the defendant from repeating those specific statements.
Giuliani dodged the bullet initially by filing for bankruptcy – effectively stopping the D.C. court from imposing injunctive relief. Now that the matter is before the Bankruptcy Court, he may have to face the music.
Jack Greiner is a partner at Faruki PLL law firm in Cincinnati. He represents Enquirer Media in First Amendment and media issues.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Georgia poll workers seek to enjoin Rudy Giuliani | Strictly Legal
