Verdict for Mainely Media in Defamation Case Affirmed

(AUGUSTA, ME — July 13, 2023) – Maine’s Supreme Court has affirmed a jury’s unanimous decision in favor of a newspaper company and two employees who were accused of defamation for reporting on adolescent boys’ allegations of sexual abuse by a former Biddeford police captain.

Former police officer Norman Gaudette and his wife, Joanne Gaudette, filed an appeal of the jury verdict returned in April 2022 in favor of Mainely Media, LLC and two of its news employees. The Gaudettes  had filed claims of defamation, false light and loss of consortium after the Biddeford-Saco-Old Orchard Beach Courier reported in 2015 on sexual abuse allegations involving Gaudette and another Biddeford police officer that dated back to the 1970s. The allegations first surfaced in 1990, but a grand jury declined to indict.

“The plaintiffs not only sued the newspaper but the reporters individually in an attempt to scare them and to chill their speech,” said Cynthia Counts of FisherBroyles in Atlanta, representing the newspaper.

In their appeal, the Gaudettes argued the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to strike testimony by Det. Michael Pulire that his 1990 investigation for the Maine Attorney General’s office had failed to exonerate Gaudette because there was “clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Gaudette was more likely than not a sexual predator.”

The Supreme Court concluded that, in the overall context of the trial, the court did not abuse its discretion in admitting that testimony.

In expounding on that reference to context, the Court noted that after a 13-day trial in York County Superior Court, the jury was asked to decide several questions in a special verdict form. The jury  found “that the Gaudettes had not proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, that any of the challenged statements made by [the alleged sexual abuse victims] were false and defamatory, or that the published articles placed Gaudette in a false light that would be offensive to a reasonable person.”

“The jury form made clear that if jurors did not find evidence of falsity in the reporting, they did not have to even address the questions related to actual malice,” said Counts. “Essentially, the jury concluded that the victims who testified, and who were at the at the heart of the news stories, were telling the truth about the abuse.

“The jury’s unanimous verdict not only exonerated the newspaper and its reporters, but it also helps vindicate those victims who had never had the chance to present their abuse claims before a judge and jury.”

Counts, who specializes in media and First Amendment law, took over the case from another attorney and worked on it for more than five years. Chris Pey of FisherBroyles also assisted at trial and on appeal. Attorneys Toby Dilworth and Melissa Hewey of Drummond Woodsum in Portland assisted at trial. James Brogan and Trevor Savage with Norman, Hanson & DeTroy of Portland assisted on the appeal.

The weekly Courier, which is owned by Mainely Media, initially began looking into the allegations involving several Biddeford police officers in 2015 following a public outcry by a Biddeford native who claimed in a social media post that when he was in high school, he had been brutally sexually assaulted by a Biddeford police officer. After that outcry, others began to come forward.

Defendants Molly Lovell-Keely, the Courier’s managing editor, and reporter Ben Meiklejohn, among others at the paper, made extensive efforts to investigate the abuse claims, contacting alleged victims, family members, the plaintiff and his attorney, state Attorney General investigators, and current and former Biddeford officers. That ultimately led to a six-week series of 29 news reports.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Joseph Jabar said that he believed it was an error for the trial court to overrule Gaudette’s objection and that the trial judge should have issued a curative statement for the jury to disregard the detective’s backhanded reference to Gaudette as a “sexual predator.”

But the justice then went on to provide pages of extensive and specific detail of the testimony from the sexual abuse victims and concluded the error, considered in context, was harmless.  “Given the extent of the evidence supporting the jury’s findings, and the paucity of evidence—independent of Gaudette’s and his family members’ testimony—to suggest that the accusations against Gaudette were false, it is highly probable that the error in refusing to strike Pulire’s single statement, which Pulire delivered only to explain why he did not consider Gaudette to have been “exonerated” through Pulire’s investigation, did not affect the verdict.”