Packed courtroom listens as Alpha News seeks dismissal of defamation lawsuit brought by Minneapolis police officer

The defamation lawsuit brought by Minneapolis Police Department Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell against Alpha News and its star reporter, Liz Collin, had its first day in court Friday in a packed hearing rife with debate over the definition of protected speech as it applies to journalists.

The hearing before Judge Edward Wahl in Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis was for a motion filed by attorney Chris Madel to dismiss the lawsuit.

Madel represents defendants Collin, Alpha News, JC Chaix and White Birch Publishing, who are tied in various ways to the film, “The Fall of Minneapolis,” and the book, “They’re Lying: The Media, the Left, and the Death of George Floyd.”

Blackwell, the Police Department’s No. 2 ranking officer, has said her reputation and career have been damaged and the defendants knowingly lied and acted with actual malice in their depiction of her testimony regarding department restraint techniques in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.

Collin sat taking notes between her attorneys, while Chaix listened to the hearing via Zoom. Blackwell did not appear.

Alpha News requested its followers attend the hearing and they came en masse. A sheriff’s deputy maintained the overflow of spectators.

The litigation likely marks the first time that Minnesota’s new Uniform Public Expression Protection Act will be applied to a defamation case. The law, which had bipartisan support and was signed by Gov. Tim Walz last year, protects journalists against “abusive lawsuits.”

After listening to Madel’s argument that Blackwell’s lawsuit would have a “chilling effect” on the media, Wahl said he and his clients appeared to be trying to end the case before it began.

“We end cases at the end,” the judge said.

Madel disagreed: “The law now is accelerating that to the front of the case, make a summary judgement like determination. You’re obligated to apply the evidence to protect First Amendment rights under UPEPA.”

One of Blackwell’s attorneys, Christopher Paul, asked Wahl to be careful in applying the new law to this case, saying it was a “summary judgment provision on steroids.”

Madel said Collin researched and reported intensively before releasing her book and serving as the on-camera interviewer for the film.

That research included interviews with several former Police Department members who said Blackwell wasn’t being truthful during Chauvin’s trial when she was shown an image of the officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck and testified the move wasn’t part of departmental training.

With an extensive power point presentation, Madel showcased sworn declarations from 33 former Minneapolis police officers — and one still employed by the department — and photo exhibits of department training manuals, which he said proved officers were trained to put their knees on a suspect’s back or neck.

Madel said Collin’s work to uncover and write about that information is protected by the First Amendment and more aggressively under the new state law.

“Thirty-four cops say [Blackwell] was wrong; 14 are saying she committed perjury,” he said. “How are you going to show malice, that what [Collin] wrote is not a supportable interpretation?”

Paul replied that “evaluating evidence is not a popularity contest” and Blackwell’s claim that she was defamed deserved to proceed in court.

Another attorney for Blackwell, Jennifer Moore, said the motion hearing put the assistant chief’s legal team in a conundrum.

“What I’m concerned about is if we go beyond the pleadings in this case we are then in the unique position of having to defend a case that we’ve never had discovery on,” she said, referring to the disclosure of evidence from the opposition’s legal team.

Madel said that Blackwell’s lawyers had plenty of time to present evidence of defamation and they did not.

Wahl asked if Blackwell’s claim of defamation was deserving of a jury trial because of the nature of her role with the Police Department and Minnesota National Guard.

Madel said the lack of evidence of defamation presented by Blackwell’s lawyers meant the case should be dismissed immediately.

“I’m begging your honor here; don’t make me litigate against you,” Madel said. “I don’t want you more or less stepping into Katie Blackwell’s shoes because they didn’t put forth the evidence they were obligated to.”

Wahl questioned Blackwell’s lawyers about whether they had made a justifiable showing to move the lawsuit forward. He said the statements about Blackwell in Collin’s book said that her testimony “seems” like she was lying.

“That word ‘seems’ is a word that folks can take shelter in,” Wahl said.

Moore disagreed. “If you read those cases, you will note that the word ‘seems’ is the substance of the opinion,” she said. “Here the substance is they lied about what Assistant Chief Blackwell testified to.”

Madel also leaned on Minnesota case law from 1996 when former Star Tribune sports columnist Sid Hartman prevailed in a defamation case against an orthopedic surgeon who Hartman spoke about at length on his WCCO radio show.

The state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Hartman, writing: “The multilayered context of respondent’s statements reveals them to be, if not mere hyperbole, at least supportable interpretations that do not assert an objective fact.”

Madel said the same standard applied: that reasonable people could disagree about whether or not the claims against Blackwell were factual, but they were undeniably protected.

He also asked Wahl to imagine President Richard Nixon suing Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein over their investigation into the Watergate break-in. He wondered what had happened to the liberal viewpoint of freedom of speech.

“What has now happened is, it’s the right that seems to be defending the First Amendment a heck of a lot more than the left,” Madel said.

Moore countered: “We are not on the right or the left here. Neither is Assistant Chief Blackwell.”

Wahl, who has 60 days to rule on the motion, said numerous times that the lawsuit was not political and he would not be relitigating Chauvin’s murder conviction.

On that fact, everyone agreed.