(NewsInsights.org) – Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jay Adleman issued an order on December 20 denying motions by Kari Lake and her attorneys to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by Stephen Richer, the county recorder. By denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Adleman gave plaintiff Richer a green light to proceed with the suit.
Richer brought the complaint against Lake in June 2023, alleging that she had “repeatedly and falsely” accused him of printing misconfigured ballots, changing the image size, and thus causing tabulator jams resulting in “spit-out ballots.” She also publicly accused him of inserting 300,000 illegal ballots into the Maricopa County vote count on multiple occasions.
In his analysis of the case to decide the merit of the defense’s dismissal motion, Adleman held that Richer had met the prerequisites to show the viability of his defamation case against Lake according to Arizona law. In other words, Richer had shown the court his evidence that the defendant had made one or more false and defamatory statements about him, that she had published those statements to one or more third parties, that she made the statements with actual malice as defined by state law, and that her defamatory statements had damaged him.
While Adelman didn’t determine the facts of the case because a jury would decide whether Lake defamed Richer, he determined whether Richer met the legal criteria to proceed with the case. He also listened to the defense’s argument that he should dismiss the case because Lake’s statements were purely “rhetorical hyperbole” that were nothing more than “imaginative expression[s]” to which Lake gave voice.
The judge found this defense argument unconvincing, telling the defense that he couldn’t consider their client’s statements as only colorfully “descriptive” language. Instead, he told the attorneys her statements were measurable and verifiable “as either true or false,” making them assertions of fact under state law.
The defense also argued that Abelman should dismiss the case based on preclusion because Lake had already brought contested election cases before state and appeals courts, and Maricopa County had sought sanctions against her for attorney’s fees, but the courts had declined.
However, the judge held the principle of preclusion didn’t apply because Lake litigated the contested election and not defamatory statements made after the election. Additionally, Judge Abelman found no grounds for summary dismissal of the case, as the defense had requested. Currently, the docket indicates the court has scheduled the case for trial in August 2024.
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