DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - A man who accuses an insurance brokerage of shortchanging him on commissions can continue to publish false and misleading statements about the firm, a Florida appeals court ruled, largely overturning a trial judge’s injunction against over tactics the man’s lawyer acknowledged could be “heavy-handed” and “relentless.”
Lewis Spagnuolo and his lawyer Jay Lewis Farrow launched a campaign of social media posts and so-called “press releases” disparaging Insurance Office of America and its principals after IOA stopped paying Spagnuolo referral fees associated with a client he brought to IOA in 2014. In March 2019 Farrow delivered a demand for $5 million to Heath Ritenour, IOA’s chief executive, and his wife, who isn’t affiliated with the firm.
In that demand, Farrow threatened that Ritenour and IOA would be subjected to “public spectacle” if they didn’t pay. Farrow also sent a demand letter to Don Whitten, who is the pastor of the Ritenours’ church and Heath’s father-in-law.
When Ritenour refused to pay, Spagnuolo sued, He and Farrow also issued what they called “press releases” and “notices to witnesses” in written and video format, bearing the IOA logo and unauthorized photos of Ritenour and his mother, describing the racketeering and fraud claims they made against IOA. Spagnuolo reposted the “press releases” on LinkedIn accounts he controlled, including one associated with a defunct firm he owned and another using the fictious name “Charles Reynolds” and bearing a photo of a former colleague.
Spagnuolo also registered a website, johnritenour.com, where he posted negative information and used paid Google promotion tools to direct people who searched for IOA to his own websites disparaging the company.
The Ritenours and IOA countersued for defamation in 2020 and a trial judge entered a temporary injunction broadly prohibiting Spagnuolo and Farrow from interfering in their business with false and misleading statements. The judge also barred them from using a 23-year-old mug shot of Heath Ritenour from a traffic offense.
Spagnuolo and Farrow appealed, and Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal, in a Feb. 28 decision, quashed most parts of the injunction on First Amendment grounds.
Farrow admitted he uses “heavy-handed” and “relentless” litigation tactics and once stated in a podcast he “goes after spouses of people that he is going after in court,” the appeals court noted. It also cited evidence the campaign had an effect, driving customers away from IOA. In one case, Heath Ritenour had to fly to Dallas during the Covid epidemic to reassure a customer the claims against his firm were false.
But the First Amendment bars restraint even of false and misleading information, the appeals court ruled. The appeals court also quashed the portion of the injunction against Spagnuolo using fictitious LinkedIn accounts to comment on IOA as overbroad.
It upheld the injunction against using Heath Ritenour’s mug shot as prohibited by Florida law. Farrow’s argument he wasn’t using the photo to promote his law firm “falls short,” the appeals court said. The law prohibiting unauthorized use of a person’s image for commercial purposes includes his “use of the photograph to encourage settlement through personal harassment and intentional interference with Appellees’ current and potential business relationships,” the appeals court ruled.
The court also rejected Farrow’s argument the litigation privilege protected his use of the photo as part of a judicial proceeding, saying the privilege only applies to materials and statements having a connection to the lawsuit. Farrow didn’t have a First Amendment right to use a decades-old mugshot from a traffic stop to intentionally interfere with IOA’s business, the court said.
The court also struck down portions of the injunction prohibiting Spagnuolo and Farrow from contacting potential clients as overly broad. It upheld a bar on contacting existing clients that they knew of, but struck the part enjoining them from contacting any existing clients at all. Finally, it upheld a bar on making false statements about the status of IOA’s insurance license.