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Former Republican candidate Michelle Foreman slapped with $100,000 in court sanctions – Tennessee Lookout [1]

['J. Holly Mccall', 'More From Author', '- December']

Date: 2023-12

A Nashville judge has ruled that former two-time Republican legislative candidate Michelle Foreman must pay $100,000 in sanctions to a former Metro Nashville council member to deter Foreman from future lawsuits intended to chill public participation.

Circuit Court Judge Lynne Ingram ruled in favor of Dave Rosenberg, who served on Metro Council from 2015-2023, finding Foreman’s actions constituted a strategic lawsuit against public participation, known as a SLAPP suit.

“The Court finds (Foreman) has filed at least two similar lawsuits, one of which is still pending, which evinces Plaintiff’s determined degree of willfulness to continue to file actions, even after being faced with multiple TPPA (Tennessee Public Participation Act) petitions, to maximize litigation costs to impose extreme expense on those she sees as critics,” Ingram wrote in her ruling.

The ruling stemmed from a May case in which Foreman filed a $300,000 defamation suit against Rosenberg, after Rosenberg referred to her as a “a truly-unhinged politician who is a COVID denier, anti-vaccine, supports Jan. 6 and election conspiracy theories, and is a pathological liar” in an October 2022 newsletter.

At the time of the newsletter, Foreman was running for the Tennessee House of Representatives in District 59 against Democrat Caleb Hemmer, whom Rosenberg supported.

In the original complaint, Ingram found Foreman’s claims didn’t meet the legal standard for defamation, judging that Rosenberg’s comments were protected First Amendment political speech backed by evidence from Foreman’s social media accounts.

Hemmer defeated Foreman in the November 2022 election. In 2019, Foreman ran unsuccessfully against Rosenberg for Metro Council.

Rosenberg was represented by attorneys Daniel Horwitz, Lindsay Smith and Melissa Dix with the Horwitz Firm, as well as Sarah Martin, and Jamie Hollin. Foreman was represented by G. Kline Preston, IV.







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[1] Url: https://tennesseelookout.com/briefs/former-republican-candidate-michelle-foreman-slapped-with-100000-in-court-sanctions/

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