CNN was just handed a slew of legal defeats in the $1 billion defamation case against them. On Monday, Judge William Scott Henry of Florida’s 14th Circuit Court sided with Plaintiff and Navy veteran Zachary Young on multiple motions against CNN, including compelling them to turn over their journalistic conduct guidelines, compelling them to comply with turning over documents necessary for financial discovery, and - much to the chagrin of CNN’s counsel - a deposition of anchor Jake Tapper.
As NewsBusters previously reported, CNN had filed a motion for a protective order to block Tapper from being deposed. Compelling that deposition during financial discovery was the first issue on the hearing docket. CNN counsel Allison Lovelady insisted that the Plaintiff only wanted a deposition so they could use it to “harass CNN and Mr. Tapper.”
In recounting Tapper’s declaration to the court in their motion for a protective order, CNN counsel Allison Lovelady quoted Tapper as saying “I have no knowledge about CNN's net worth. I don't have any knowledge regarding what the Tapper show may or may not generate that may go toward CNN's net worth."
Judge Henry came down hard on CNN’s effort to keep Tapper from being deposed. When issuing his ruling, the Judge seemingly suggested Tapper was being untruthful. “I kind of have a hard time believing what Mr. Tapper put in that declaration,” he said, referencing Tapper's stated lack of knowledge. "I have a feeling that is the basis of what time slot he gets and how much his contract is and everything else with CNN."
The ruling also stipulated that the deposition would be limited to only questions about CNN’s finances and potential internal penalties in relation to getting reporting wrong. This was seemingly done because CNN was also concerned that a deposition of Tapper was a way to “backdoor a fact witness” since facts discovery was closed, according to Lovelady.
Tapper’s deposition was also allowed to proceed because Judge Henry also ruled that CNN must now comply with their previous agreement on when financial discovery would begin.
As NewsBusters reported last week, Florida’s First District Court of Appeals denied the CNN’s motion for a rehearing; their hope was that the court would overturn its decision that Young could seek punitive damages at trial. NewsBusters also reported that CNN was refusing to comply until the Court of Appeals issued their ruling on a rehearing, that’s after the appeals court had already ruled in Young’s favor in June.
But in the Monday hearing, CNN’s lead counsel Deanna K. Shullman attempted to move the goalpost again; wanting to tie financial discovery to a case going before the Florida Supreme Court (Perlmutter v. Federal Insurance Company) because it dealt with a question about punitive damages. The ruling was far from being issued but Shullman predicted that it would be decided in a way that would be beneficial to CNN, but the appeals court had already shot down CNN's attempt to tie the two together.
Judge Henry overruled CNN’s objection to Young’s motion to comply and gave them 45 days to turn over the documents. The concern expressed by Vel Freedman, lead counsel for Young, was that they would lose the January 6, 2025 start date for the trial. “CNN is trying to make us lose it again,” he said. Shullman didn’t see what the big deal was since they had a back up start, which was two months later.
Finally, CNN was given 14 days to turn over their written journalistic conduct and social media guidelines, which they had been refusing to do, arguing that fact discovery was already closed.
Here's CNN lawyer Allison Lovelady playing coy with whether or not CNN has written guidelines for journalistic conduct as she fights to keep them secret. She admits CNN was asked for them but played games with what was meant by "guidelines."
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) August 13, 2024
Young's lawyer Vel Freedman, notes… pic.twitter.com/JoJcyBIVlC
Young’s counsel told the court they had only learned about the existence of the written guidelines from a deposition of CNN’s corporate representative in June, which was ordered to take place after discovery had closed because CNN had delayed the process for months.
In the hearing, Lovelady admitted that CNN was asked about the existence of the guidelines early in the case but also admitted that they were playing coy about what Young’s counsel was asking about:
Mr. Freedman likes to play as if they were trying to be efficient with discovery and that there was some sort of game playing with the corporate rep. deposition. Just to revisit the timeline briefly. If your honor recalls, they had a list of, I think it was 22 topics, some of them were vague. Even in the case management conference before we got to our motion for a protective order about the topics, you even flagged in December, 2023, you yourself your Honor pointed out topic 11, which was formal or informal guidelines regarding bias or agenda in journalism. And we said, 'we’re not really sure what that means.' And you said, 'I don’t either.'
Addressing what Lovelady described as “formal and informal guidelines” (alluding that certain guidelines were not written down), Freedman noted that CNN’s representation was referencing the guidelines in the deposition. “I don’t know how you review unwritten guidelines,” he quipped. “All CNN has to do is say they don’t exist and our fight is over.”
Nevertheless, CNN persisted and the Judge ruled against them.
Of the five motions being discussed during the Monday hearing, CNN did prevail on two of them. For the first motion, CNN was successful in compelling Young to travel from his home in Austria to Florida so they could beg for a settlement. As NewsBusters previously reported, this was a likely outcome since they successfully argued for it once before. But what was shocking were the comments Shullman made during her argument on the issue.
Young argued that travel was difficult for him because of an injury he sustained while in the Navy. Shullman complained that the other side “cried ‘injury’ without declaration.” When it was brought up that Young experienced pain during long periods of sitting, she protested: “So do I, your Honor!” “I have to leave the State of Florida to get to Bay County. CNN has to travel from the state of Georgia,” she huffed.
CNN’s other win was a very minor victory in the form of an extension on the time allotted for them to respond to accusations from Young’s counsel that they were allegedly destroying evidence critical to the case.
Seeing as Young's team has already signaled that they are not open to a settlement, the only hope CNN had left was their motion for summary judgement where they were resting most of their defense on citing Taliban Sharia law.
