Judge Dismisses Steven Crowder Lawsuit, Orders Crowder to Pay $58,000
A second update from the Louder with Crowder case.
In October of last year, Steven Crowder began pursuing a variety of frivolous legal actions against former employee Jared Mittelo, aka Jared Monroe. This included filing a Rule 202 petition, which illegally sought to use the tools of judicial discovery to obtain information about Jared’s protected activities, and filing a lawsuit seeking to enforce an illegal non-disparagement clause against Jared.
In April of this year, acting as Jared’s legal representative, I filed an unfair labor practice (“ULP”) charge at the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) alleging that Crowder maintains severance agreements with former employees that contain illegal confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses and that Crowder filed an illegal lawsuit seeking to enforce an illegal non-disparagement clause against Jared.
After I filed the ULP charge, Crowder and his attorneys apparently realized that filing a lawsuit seeking to enforce an illegal contract clause was a mistake and withdrew that lawsuit. In its place, they filed a second lawsuit alleging, not that Jared had violated a contractual non-disparagement clause, but instead that he had committed common-law defamation against Crowder.
The statements that Crowder alleged as defamatory are the following text messages that Jared sent to Crowder’s ex-wife.
As I noted in an earlier piece about this legal battle, Crowder’s defamation lawsuit was doomed to fail because, among other things, it clearly runs afoul of the Texas anti-SLAPP statute, the Texas Citizens Participation Act.
Yesterday, the judge in the defamation lawsuit reached the same conclusion and ordered (1) that Crowder’s lawsuit be dismissed with prejudice, (2) that Crowder be required to reimburse Jared for $43,037 of legal expenses, and (3) that Crowder be required to pay an additional $15,000 in sanctions in order to deter Crowder from filing any similar actions in the future.
Crowder has already indicated that he is going to appeal the decision. If that appeal fails, which it will, he will be on the hook for an additional $35,750 of legal fees per the district court order.
Beyond the defamation lawsuit, the ULP charges against Crowder are still pending at the NLRB. In that proceeding, Crowder will have to answer for filing the Rule 202 petition and earlier lawsuit attempting to enforce an illegal non-disparagement clause. Under current law, both actions violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) and the remedy for those violations is the reimbursement of Jared’s legal expenses.
Awesome!
Daily Wire dodged a bullet.