Attorneys for former Boulder City Council candidate Steven Rosenblum are opposing activist Eric Budd’s petition for the Colorado Supreme Court to review a defamation lawsuit Rosenblum brought against Budd and other political organizers.
Courtesy photo
Eric Budd
Rosenblum’s original lawsuit accused Budd and several other organizers of conspiring to defame him, and it also made separate accusations that Budd misappropriated Rosenblum’s likeness and defamed him by creating a fake social media account under Rosenblum’s name and using it to share a link to a Safer Leaks blog, which at the time falsely attributed a series of Reddit posts to Rosenblum.
In an Aug. 3 opinion, Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Terry Fox wrote that Rosenblum’s misappropriation and defamation claims against Budd might have enough merit to succeed at trial. However, the same was not true for Rosenblum’s claims of civil conspiracy against Budd and fellow defendants Katie Farnan, Ryan Welsh, Mark Van Akkeren, Sarah Dawn Haynes and the Boulder Progressives organization, and the other defendants were dismissed from the case.
Budd petitioned on Oct. 26 for a writ of certiorari, which asks the Supreme Court to review Fox’s opinion that some of Rosenblum’s legal claims against Budd might have enough merit to succeed at trial. The Oct. 26 filing describes the original lawsuit against Budd and other organizers as a “brazen attack on Mr. Budd’s First Amendment rights and the political process.”
The opposition brief filed Thursday by Rosenblum’s attorneys stated that Budd’s petition is “without merit and should be denied.”
According to this most recent filing, Budd’s petition presented three issues as grounds for reviewing the Court of Appeals decision. First, it asserted that the Court of Appeals “refused to decide the legal question of whether Budd’s creation of the Twitter account and inclusion of the hyperlink” was defamatory. Thursday’s filing said the Court of Appeals did rule that it was “reasonably likely” that the account plus link combination could be construed as a defamatory statement.
Second, according to the filing, Budd’s petition argued the Court of Appeals had not ruled on whether Budd could be deemed a “content provider” based on his actions. Under Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act, “interactive computer services” such as social media sites are immune from liability for third-party content published by “content providers.” However, content providers can be held liable for the content they post. But the Court of Appeals did rule that Budd could be classified as a content provider, the filing stated.
And third, the filing read, Budd claimed he had “a First Amendment privilege to use (Rosenblum’s) name” for reasons of “newsworthiness” because Rosenblum’s candidacy for office was a matter of public interest. Again, the filing stated, the Court of Appeals already ruled that the “newsworthiness” privilege did not apply in this situation because Budd “engaged in impersonation.”
The Colorado Supreme Court will decide whether to review the lawsuit. If that does not happen, the case could go to trial.
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