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

The defamation lawsuit brought by Minneapolis Police Department Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell against Alpha News and their star reporter, Liz Collin, got 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 was for a motion filed by attorney Chris Madel to dismiss the lawsuit. He is representing Collin, Alpha News, Dr. J.C. Chaix and White Birch Publishing, defendants that 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 No. 2 ranking officer with MPD, has claimed her reputation and career have been damaged and the defendants knowingly lied and acted with actual malice in how they depicted 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. Chaix was allowed to listen to the hearing via Zoom. Blackwell did not appear. Alpha News requested followers to attend the hearing and they came en masse. A sheriff’s deputy maintained the overflow of spectators — when someone left the gallery, he would open the door and call in a person waiting outside to take the vacated chair.

The litigation likely marks the first time that a new piece of state legislation called the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act [UPEPA] will be applied to a defamation case in Minnesota. UPEPA, which had bipartisan support and was signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz last year, protects journalists against “abusive lawsuits.”

Judge Edward Wahl, in listening to Madel’s claims that Blackwell’s lawsuit would have a “chilling effect” on the media, said it felt like Madel and his clients were trying to end the case before it began. “We end cases at the end,” Wahl 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 UPEPA to this case saying it was a “summary judgement provision on steroids.”

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

Part of that research included interviews with several former members of MPD who said Blackwell wasn’t being truthful when she was shown an image of Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck at trial and testified it wasn’t departmental training.

With an extensive power point presentation, Madel showcased sworn declarations from 33 former MPD officers — and one still employed by the department — and photo exhibits of MPD 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 UPEPA. He added that the factual nature of the claims are not at issue because it is a protected opinion.

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

Paul replied to that argument by saying, “evaluating evidence is not a popularity contest,” and that Blackwell’s claim that she was defamed deserved to proceed in court. Another attorney for Blackwell, Jennifer Moore, said the motion hearing put Blackwell’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 legal team had plenty of time to present factual evidence of defamation and they had not.

Wahl wondered aloud if, with his motion, Madel was “trying to stop the game in the first inning.” He asked if Blackwell’s claim of defamation was deserving of a jury trial due to the nature of her role with MPD and the Minnesota National Guard. He also felt he could be faithful to UPEPA while looking deeper into the case.

Madel said the lack of factual evidence of defamation brought forth 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 team about whether they had made a justifiable showing to move the lawsuit forward. He noted that 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, pointing to various First Amendment cases that Madel had used in his presentation.

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

There were discussions of what President James Madison intended with the First Amendment and references to major freedom of speech cases. 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 Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Hartman in that case, 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 because of their investigation into Watergate. 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 enter a ruling on the motion, said numerous times this was not a political lawsuit and he would not be relitigating the conviction of Chauvin for the murder of Floyd.

On that fact, everyone agreed.