This link to read all ten, with the worse being reported as:
1) The most read fraud story this year was about a US blogger who was fined £36,000 after causing a man to lose his job after reporting him for mortgage fraud.
Blogger Johnny Northside Hoff posted an article about mortgage specialist Jerry Moore on his blog, after finding out that he was connected to a mortgage fraud.
Following the post, Moore was fired which resulted in him taking legal action against Hoff.
In court, the jury agreed that Hoff had committed "tortious interference" by meddling with Moore's employment. Hoff was fined £36,000.
Background. District Court docket info is online, this link. Searching for the case, I used party name "Jerry Moore," and then since there are several litigants with the name, searching the returned list for "Hoff," finding it to be Case No. 27-CV-09-17778. Procedural steps, and filings with the court are logged, but you cannot tell the issues from a docket listing.
I have noted, it was Hoff's blog news of a mortgage fraud prosecution of a Larry Maxwell involving the plaintiff in the suit against Hoff, Jerry Moore, where Moore was not indicted and claimed innocence and that a check made out to him in a consulting capacity was never given him.
Hoff's jury verdict was that he did not say anything untrue about Moore, there was no defamation but that Moore was entitled to a $60,000 judgment for interfering with Moore's employment by a U.Minn. Twin Cities community branch operation in North Mpls.
That weird verdict was reduced to a judgment entered in the court clerk's office April 13, 2011, but the post judgment motions remain pending. Post trial argument includes Amicus participation by a professional journalism association in support of Hoff.
Motions were heard May 31, 2011, and presently remain "under advisement." That means a decision is pending, and nobody knows what it will be until the judge issues it. Hoff would want the judgment set aside as a matter of law, and likely hopes for that result while not being able to anticipate an outcome until one is officially issued.
The judge has a statutory 90 days to rule on such things, by issuing an order and opinion, the opinion giving legal argument and justification for the order; and if more time is needed litigants seldom object. (Wisdom is lacking in being discourteous to a judge still in a decision-making position.)
The journalism association argued that basic First Amendment precedent was in support of the position that absent a defamation, stating an untrue thing causing a plaintiff harm, no inteference with contract suit could prevail under the same facts, based upon things published which were truthful; and that such was so as a matter of First Amendment Constitutional law, with precedent in Minnesota decisions and decisions of the US Supreme Court.
With the date of hearing being the trigger date, now is more than half of the ninety day period has elapsed. There may be something final at the trial court level soon.
Whichever side ultimately wins at the trial level can anticipate the other appealing.
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Hoff's reporting of the Larry Maxwell convictions included noting that Brad Johnson prosecuted the matter for Freeman's Hennepin County Attorney office.
Some in Anoka County may recall last election, that Brad Johnson ran for Anoka County Attorney, hoping to succeed his father, Robert M.A. Johnson, and grandfather, Robert Johnson, in office.
It was close.
I supported Johnson because of his experience in white collar crime prosecutions, and because despite the family ties, he was less of an "old boy" insider than Tony Polumbo, who won, after over fifteen years in the Anoka CA office in both trial and administrative capacities.
Johnson continues to do white collar trial litigation in Hennepin County, in Freeman's office.