The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s awarding of attorney’s fees against three prominent conservative Arizonans last week. A three-judge panel held that the defamation lawsuit Senator Mark Finchem (R-Prescott) and former legislator Anthony Kern filed in February 2021— joined later by Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ-09) (pictured above, right) — against former Yuma Democratic legislator Charlene Fernandez over her letter to the FBI demanding an investigation of over their connections to the January 6 protest was not groundless. The three were at the Capitol that day but did not participate in the unauthorized entry of the building or aggressive behavior.
Finchem (pictured above, left) expressed his disappointment that the court didn’t go further in its ruling to The Arizona Sun Times. “The court had a golden opportunity to check the long-standing injustice of NYT v. Sullivan by addressing bluntly false claims by political opposition under color of authority, but took the cowardly route, ignoring the evidence,” he said. “Now that I, and the other defendants have been exonerated what recourse do we have to address the injustice? It is if little comfort that those who perpetrated the real BIG LIE got away with it and the court did nothin to hold those liars accountable. At least we don’t have to pay for the abuse that we endured for the cause of liberty.”
While the appeals court has repeatedly ruled against conservatives concerned about election wrongdoing since 2020, this abrupt change is likely due to the Arizona Supreme Court holding in May last year that attorney’s fees and sanctions should not be awarded against plaintiffs and their attorneys in election related lawsuits, even if the complaints are a “long shot.”
Two of the judges on the panel were not expected to rule this way, legal experts told The Sun Times. Judge Randall Howe is considered one of the furthest left judges on the bench, and Judge Daniel Kiley dismissed an election lawsuit over the use of Sharpies to mark ballots, avoiding any discussion of the evidence.
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times
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