BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Legal Newsline) - A lawyer who said a rival firm got him fired by sharing a controversial Facebook post about the George Floyd killing with his supervisors gets a second chance at suing for tortious interference, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled.
Daniel Flickinger sued King Simmons Ford & Spree and name partner Lawrence Tracy King after he was told to resign from his associate position with Wainwright Pope & McMeekin. Flickinger had been with the Birmingham firm for 11 years when in June 2020 he posted comments on his personal Facebook page that appeared to refer to George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer the previous month.
The post read: "Things I think about: If I were a seven-time felon, with my most recent prison stint stemming from robbing and holding a pregnant woman at gunpoint in her home, would I choose to die in a fentanyl and methamphetamine numbed strangulation if it meant being worshipped in a nationwide funeral and my family receiving millions of dollars? Purely hypothetical."
Several days later his supervising attorney, Lonnie Wainwright, called him and asked to meet him about the post, which King had shared with Wainwright. Flickinger says shortly afterward he received a “cryptic tweet” from the King law firm’s Twitter account @KingSimmonsPC with a “large eyes emoji” along with one of his Facebook posts. At a meeting with WPM partners the next day, they admitted they “did not understand social media” but one asked Flickinger “how could you do this to us?”
Flickinger said King Simmons also made a “counterfeit” profile, using a photograph scraped from the Wainwright Pope website, and spread his personal posts on a 1,500-member private Facebook group where members excoriated him for being a racist who “condones running down protesters” and is “ugly inside and out.” Flickinger said he later discovered a post on the King Simmons law firm Twitter feed from May describing a “white guy that got fired by his law firm” who refused to wear a mask in a “ghetto store.” “What a turd…” the post said.
At the end of the meeting Flickinger was told to resign and he said the partners told him the King firm had the “ability and willingness to control the distribution of the false and defamatory images favorably for WPM.”
He sued King Simmons for defamation and tortious interference in his job. The trial court dismissed his case, saying King Simmons shared Flickinger’s actual posts so truth provided a total defense.
The Alabama Supreme Court partially reversed in an April 21 decision, dismissing the defamation claims but allowing the tortious-interference claim to proceed. Numerous court decisions have found calling someone racist isn’t defamatory without alleging specific racist acts, the court said.
“Although we should not be understood as condoning the casual use of such a powerful label, in the present case, the third parties' use of the term `racist’ is not actionable as Flickinger's claims are currently pleaded,” the court ruled.
Flickinger was on firmer ground accusing King Simmons of intentionally interfering with his job, however. The tweets from the firm that appeared to gloat about his firing suggest King Simmons lawyers wanted Flickinger to lose his job, the court ruled, and that is enough for his claims to survive summary judgment.
“Contrary to the King defendants' contentions, Flickinger has asserted allegations in his complaint that would support an inference of intent to interfere with his employer-employee relationship with WPM, at least at the pleading stage,” the court concluded. “We also cannot ignore the fact that the termination of Flickinger's employment occurred almost immediately after WPM was contacted by King.”