NEW HAVEN, Conn. (Legal Newsline) - A federal judge won't change his mind after preventing a personal injury lawyer from pursuing defamation claims against a gun-maker that sued the attorney.
Connecticut federal judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer on Jan. 8 refused Jeffrey Bagnell's motion for reconsideration of a 2022 ruling that prevented his defamation counter-claim. SIG Sauer has sued Bagnell in federal court, alleging an animated film on his website and YouTube page shows why the company's P320 pistol goes off without users pulling the trigger.
That alleged malfunction is basis of many lawsuits, though juries and judges have ruled against Bagnell's clients. SIG Sauer sued Bagnell to get the video taken down.
Bagnell's counter-claim says the company defamed him in a press release issued by the company when it filed suit against him.
Meyer ruled July 10 that his claims fail, as the press release accurately summarized SIG Sauer's lawsuit. Meyer cited the fair report privilege.
On Jan. 8, he agreed with Bagnell that he failed to consider additional commentary from the Restatement (Second) of Torts. From there, Meyer had found Connecticut would extend the fair report privilege to press releases and other public statements by litigants if they recount what they have alleged in court proceedings.
The additional commentary recognizes a self-reporting exception to the fair report privilege.
"I agree with the Bagnell defendants that I overlooked this aspect of the Restatement’s commentary. But the Bagnell defendants themselves failed to cite or discuss the Restatement’s self-reporting exception in response to Sig Sauer’s motion to dismiss," Meyer's ruling says.
"They have raised it for the first time in their motion for reconsideration. Nor do they cite any Connecticut case law that discusses—much less adopts—the Restatement’s self-reporting exception to the fair report privilege.
"Accordingly, they have not met the demanding standard for a motion for reconsideration, which requires a movant to show that there was a clear error or manifest injustice and not merely that the movant wishes to take a crack at relitigating an issue already decided."
Meyer also predicted the Connecticut Supreme Court would not "broadly apply such an exception to categorically extend to any press release or other public statement that a party may make about the allegations it has pled in a court complaint."
As for Bagnell's actual personal injury cases against SIG Sauer, the company won summary judgment in a Kentucky case last year, while a New Hampshire jury in 2022 also sided with the company.