Briefing and oral argument in the appeal from a Hennepin County District Court jury verdict and the judge's follow-up order and opinion denying defendant John Hoff judgment as a matter of law has been reported. It was noted earlier on Crabgrass, here.
The losing defendant appealed in Moore v. Hoff after a confusing jury verdict finding lack of defamation, (i.e., that Hoff made true statements with regard to plaintiff Moore), but the jury also found that Hoff wrongly interfered with Plaintiff Jerry Moore's employment at a U.Minn. North Minnesota community services outlet.
The status of the case remains as it was weeks ago, argued and awaiting the three judge panel's authoring of an opinion.
The opinion will either be published as precedent or be an unpublished opinion, one not believed to make any new point of law sufficient for it to become flagged as precedent.
Now, today, Sheila Regan in this Twin Cities Daily Planet online report, has written a follow-up review of the Moore v. Hoff appeal in which she explains things well and presents details she learned from interviewing attorneys and from her review of briefing.
Regan also posts the briefs, which readers can review in forming a guess of whether the trial court will be affirmed or reversed on appeal.
(Briefing also contains much of the trial court record in appendices, so that a full picture of the dispute is available.)
The basic question - How can you commit a tort, i.e., do something that is in some way wrongful, where you exercise free speech rights by saying truthful things that are imbued with a public interest; saying it in a public manner, i.e., via web publishing and contacting a public institution to inquire and complain about its practices in a particular employment situation?
Is an employee insulated from another person telling an employer true facts concerning the employee, and then expressing opinions about the wisdom and propriety of the employment relationship being continued in light of the true facts that were communicated? Going so far as to urge that the employment would best be ended.
Is an employee to be insulated that way, as the trial court determined, and should the law be read differently by an appellate court's intervening and reversing the lower court legal conclusions?
With conflicting policy norms, the right to speak freely and the right to have one's employment free from improper interference being at issue, the question is whether the protected speech of Hoff was an improper interference, or one protected from being held wrong because of the reach of the First Amendment when all Hoff did was say true things and then suggest consequences he believed proper.
In the simplest case, a customer truthfully telling a store owner of seeing a cashier take money for a purchase and pocket it instead of running it through the owner's till, clearly there the cashier is not insulated from the consequences of having an observed theft reported.
At the other end of the spectrum, going to the boss and wrongly calling someone a thief while knowing it untrue, that clearly is wrong and any employee harmed from that should be given a legal remedy.
While the polar extremes are each clear, Hoff awaits a decision hoping it will hold his speech to be of the former (justified and protected) kind. Hoff was NOT reporting a theft, with things not being that simple: but he was publishing and communicating some background information relevant to an employee in a particular job situation - where as always, how the employer reacts to the information is always wholly within the discretion of the employer.
Indeed, even in the direct theft case, an employer can decide to fire or give a second chance. The third party outside of that contract-related situation cannot force the issue one way or the other.
There simply is no power in a third person to force any result between freely contracting persons; except of course where the third party is the government acting in some regulatory capacity. But Hoff is a private third-party, not given special powers.
So, you decide. If Hoff told the employer true information and the employer terminated the employment - either based on that information or for other reasons - but with Hoff hoping that his speaking would lead to the end of the employment; did Hoff do anything wrong regarding Moore's job to the extent Moore should have a ljudicially imposed remedy against Hoff? My bet is Hoff wins; however as a practical matter it is difficult to get three judges to say a fourth judge made a mistake. Messed up. Was wrong about the law and legal implications from the facts.
Think this way, you do not lightly tell your mother-in-law she's wrong; certainly not as a habit but instead only infrequently if at all, and then only in rare instances where it's just too hard to bite your tongue and be silent. That is roughly parallel to Hoff's burden on appeal.
