Free Speech v. Defamation on Social Media - A recap of the Ryan Upchurch Trial

In this episode, the Music Row Dealmakers discuss the 18 Million Dollar verdict against their client, the defendant Ryan Upchurch, in the recent case in Middle District Court brought by Robertson and Rodni, relatives of Kylie Rodni.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Music Road Dealmakers, where we explore our world of making deals from Nashville's famed Music Row. In the heart of Music City, we are the deal makers, from composing to closing. Now, here's your hosts, Barry Neil Schrom and Dennis Disney.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Hello, all you dealmakers out there, and thank you for tuning in. We've been absent for uh about a month or so, and uh apologize for that absence, but uh we've been rather busy boys. We appreciate your continued support, and this is the 21st episode of of Music Road Dealmakers. And as usual, Dennis and I wish to thank all of you for for listening in and and supporting us and and continuing toward our goal of listeners, and we've we've grown to approaching 2,000, and we we really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Wait, wait, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

You said this is 21? Yes, sir. So we're legal in all states now? Oh well, apparently. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we can speak freely. Well, we'll we'll we'll get to that. Please, please help us share uh this uh podcast with all your friends. If you haven't already, hit the subscribe button and spread the word on your uh social media accounts. We really appreciate it. Just uh as a reminder, I'm Barry Neil Schrom, founding partner from Disney and Associates, and my co-host is my partner, Dennis uh Glen Disney. And we are music role deal makers from composing to closing. Don't forget, if you'd like to interact with us more, we're always welcome to have your questions and comments about anything we discuss here on the show. Please leave Dennis or me a message at 877-7 Dealmakers. That's D-E-A-L-M-A-K-E-R-S, or send us an email at questions at musicrowdealmakers.com, which you can also visit to get all of our past episodes. Today we are talking not so much about deals, but about um litigation. One of the reasons that uh Dennis and I have been uh not been uh able to do the podcast is because we were involved in a a little piece of uh defamation litigation. I guess I can refer to it as a little piece, can I, Dennis? It's it's more like a huge paint in our tushy.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

You might want to clarify it though. We were representing someone.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

We weren't being well, yes, we weren't being sued. Thank you for that clarification. It one of our clients, his name is Ryan Upchurch. Some of you may be familiar with Ryan. He is a social media influencer, he has a huge following online of about four million followers. And he I guess it blends rap with country, is the best way to define Ryan. He's an independent artist and and sort of a self-made uh celebrity. Ryan uh has a lot of interest, fishing, just about anything outdoors, and and Ryan uh has a curious nature, and that curious nature is sort of what led to why we were defending him in court. In August of 2022, August 8th, in Truckee, California, a young 16-year-old girl went missing, Kylie Rodney. Many of you will probably be familiar with that case. It it garnered worldwide attention. There were people literally all over the world talking about it, uh speculating about what had happened. Was it a suicide? Was it a murder? Was it uh an accident? And and um even the local authorities tended to uh to question what was going on. And so uh Ryan's curiosity led to him uh beginning to explore and and follow and research the story of of Kylie Rodney, and he began to speculate about various conspiracy theories that not only he but but the entire internet community were talking about. And through that process made several statements, which we'll get into later. But uh as a result of the statements and and in in December of 22, Ryan was sent to cease and desist by a man named Mr. Robertson who asked him to stop making comments about his granddaughter, Kylie Rodney. And Ryan did not stop, but continued making statements. So a lawsuit was filed. The contributing factors in that lawsuit were defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Dennis, why don't you give us a little bit of uh background into those two elements? I know there were several other issues raised in the case, but those were the two that ultimately made it to the jury.

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Yeah, it was it's it's interesting because obviously, and we'll talk about it here in a little bit, this blended so many different ma uh issues. First amendment free speech issues, uh the tenor and timbre to use musical terms, of the internet itself, and especially in the crouton crew, true crime community. Say that five times faster. Well, I thought you were asking for croutons for your salad. And uh so all these things sort of come together, and then you marry over uh or lay over top of that this idea of what are the elements that have to be proven in defamation and in intentional infliction of emotional distress, and it becomes sort of a pretty complex idea to approach and to get a jury to understand, if you will. But basically what happened was Ryan came across as he, and he's not a true, true crime aficionado. He's never done that. Matter of fact, he's not done it to the point that he doesn't even monetize his YouTube channel. He just, hey, this came in, somehow got into my feed, thought it was interesting, he checked into it. And initially, the first two weeks that Kylie went missing, everything that he heard and was talking about was fairly supportive of the family, you know, at that point. So trying to find her.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Trying to find her. One thing we should point out about Ryan is he is from a small county in Tennessee and very, very pro-free speech constitution, and believes very strongly in, you mentioned the First Amendment. He he very strongly believes that a person has a right to speak their mind. So so yeah, I mean, the the first couple of weeks, he was really putting out uh rewards and and efforts to find her and trying to support, as you say, the the family's search.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Well, and where it all started was she had left a party, a graduation party at this campground, and this is Northern California, very wooded area, had 200 or so other teenagers there, and nobody was sharing photos, which it seems unusual in this day and time that teenagers aren't snapping photos on their phones, you know, ad nauseum.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

That was one of the odd things about this case, and and a lot of a lot of those little issues like that. I mean, you've got 200 teenagers at a party, I think it was a graduation party of some sort, celebrating uh the graduation of a lot of those people and and of the students, and and and nobody's taking pictures, nobody's putting pictures on their social media.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

That was curious to everybody, yeah, honestly. And because that was happening and nobody was really sharing much details of the party, other than a few friends who came out and were interviewed by local news saying there were some adult men there, there might have been some drugs there, et cetera, et cetera. All that sort of fed into this. And so Ryan stepped up and said, Well, how do we get people to talk more and share photos and that sort of thing? More specifically, teenagers. Most specifically teenagers. And so he offered up a Dodge Hellcat that he owned, and it was worth about $80,000. And he offered that up. And interestingly, no teenagers bought, no, no, you know, took up that challenge, interestingly enough. But there was another company organization really called Adventures with Purpose, who their role at that time, when they they don't exist any longer, but at that time, they went around the country voluntarily searching for to help close cold cases, especially when it involved water searches. Right. And this was around lakes there in Northern California. They came in at the end of that two-week period and actually found Kylie's car submerged in a lake. It was a lake that had been searched multiple times already. They they there were over 16 different governmental agencies from local police, local sheriffs to the FBI to all these people, hundreds of community people, people in the community came out and searched. Nobody thousands found man hours. Nine nine ninety thousand, I think, was the number of man hours. And Adventures with Purpose came in, and within less than 72 hours of getting on site, they went and researched a lot of the lake areas that had already been searched multiple, multiple times. And they are the ones that actually found the car. And when they found the car, unfortunately, one of the we call them AWP, Adventures with Purpose, one of their divers came out of the water and said, I've found it, there is a body, and it looks suspicious. Of course, that just fed into the whole internet true crime community even further. Right. But jumping ahead a little bit, Ryan did award the car to the team leader for that, because he had made that bargain, help find the car. That's what he's looking for first, help find the car, and I will give you the Hellcat. And so he did do that, and he even later donated $100,000 more just to the AWP organization. So he really stepped forward to help. But then that's where things started going awry, so to speak, because all of that just fed more questions, more skepticism, more conspiracy theories, if you will. And it wasn't Ryan making these up out of whole cloth. That's what we kept trying to press on the jury. It wasn't him making this up. He was getting this information from all across the internet and from mainstream media. And as a matter of fact, for the two weeks prior to finding the car, the FBI reports showed that they were treating this as a an abduction, that they were looking for foul play. Mainstream media was talking about that. The internet was talking about the few friends that did the interviews locally brought up information that sort of purported to tell that same theory. And so after that, the car was found, and then ultimately the body was identified as Kylie. Coming back to your point with Ryan and growing up in the rural area of Tennessee that he is, they're fairly black and white in it. And and unfortunately, his comments made so ineloquently that it hurt him was that I know I'm paraphrasing, I don't believe they're real. Now he wasn't saying, as he said online and he said in court, I wasn't saying they weren't humans. I don't know their identities. All I'm hearing is stuff online, and what can you truly believe online these days, which is true. With the even in in 2022, AI was out there, there were a lot of deep fakes happening. Well, it wasn't to the level it is now, obviously, which is even way beyond you know, the average person being able to recognize that it's computer generated stuff. But so he got caught up in this wave of I I don't know that they're real.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Well, and and the whole situation. I mean, he he thought the whole situation was perhaps fake. And and as you say, as he said, not real. I don't believe Kylie is real, I don't believe her grandfather is real, don't believe the father is real. I mean, he actually showed pictures of those two, and that's part of I think what led to the jury's verdict was some of those statements. And then he also questioned a GoFundMe account. I know you were getting to that, and we'll get to that in a minute. Now, the thing about this is, and and you and I, of course, have talked about this so much, uh, there's a First Amendment issue here, right? And in the case, in in and and just for the our listeners, this was in the Middle District Court of Tennessee. Uh, it's a federal court because they had diversity jurisdiction, and and usually a defamation case would be brought in a state court. But this was federal court. It was a week-long trial, and it was grueling. But with the First Amendment, you know, and the First Amendment was adopted in 1791. And as most people know, uh the pertinent part here is that uh it says that Congress can't make a law, quote, abridging the freedom of speech and uh or of the press, it says. And so a couple of things here that feed into this is does Ryan have the m the right to make a statement in furtherance of this conversation that was already going on. Now, the other side, as you'll recall, argued and started the their opening statement with the phrase, you can't tell a lie about a grieving family. And they repeatedly kept going to the Alex Jones case and bringing up the Alex Jones case. And you and I both know there are a lot of things that distinguish that case from this Ryan Up church. But let's just examine that one statement. Why is that wrong, Dennis? Why why is the statement you can't tell a lie about a grieving family incorrect?

SPEAKER_03 14:50

Well, from my perspective, first of all, when you dissect the elements of defamation, and they they lodged three claims defamation, defamation per se, which we'll talk about, and then in intentional infliction of emotional distress. But by def defamation means it has to be a provable fact, false provable falsity, if you will, that's presented as fact. And to say that you can't tell a lie about a grieving family is incorrect in my mind, primarily because it never reaches to that level, depending on the fact. I mean I mean the lie, I will say that. You can't say things that call someone a drug user or drug abuser when they're not. You can't say somebody's beating their wife when they're not. You can't say that they're dishonest and a crook when they're not. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, but but that's those statements are outrageous. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: They are, but they go to but outrageous gets to IIED, intentional inflation of emotional distress. That's where that element comes into play. But under defamation, it doesn't have to be outrageous. It just has to be a falsity presented as fact. It has to be a provable falsity.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Well, do we not have the First Amendment right to lie?

SPEAKER_03 16:09

Well, you do. Now, uh I will say that we can split parse some of these words in here because, first of all, to say that I have a First Amendment right without consequences is a bit of a stretch.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

We all have fire.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

Exactly. And what's the old the flip side of that? Well, you can if there's an actual fire. Okay, got it. But but but you know, so there are consequences if you go too far, and there need to be. The other thing is you can lose money in this case, you can lose your job and and these sorts of things because only the government is precluded from bridging. Yeah. You know, so you know, if the government came in and said, hey, you can't say these things at all, that that'd be one thing. But if you're a private citizen saying things about another private citizen, you know, you're free to say that, but just know there might be some consequences for that depending on how far you go. But the lie part of it, to your point, some of it goes, well, what really is the lie? And how far does the lie go? And how much damage, which is one of the elements of defamation, how much damage did that cause? Our argument has had been in this whole thing when he kept saying he made very declaratory, declaratory statements, the grandfather's is fake, the father's fake, the Kylie's fake, so to speak. And those were his statements. And of course, our view from the get-go was, well, what's the damage that, other than, you know, you hate to hear it. You know, if I was the grandfather, I hate to hear that about my granddaughter. I've got two granddaughters. Absolutely, I'd hate to hear that. Is there any real damage there? That that's where I kind of so I thought that failed on the case.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

It did, it did, and and the damage is and and uh we'll we'll explain a little bit for our audience what what that why that's important, because uh in law there there's a concept called a tort. And uh basically a tort implies there's a duty, and everybody has a duty of good faith and fair dealing and and and certain things. And when you breach one of those duties to your fellow citizen, if it causes damage and there's a causal relationship between what you did and and the damage, then there is redress for that. So that's when when Dennis talks about there not being any uh damages, then that's what he's talking about. But there's no causal relationship, at least there in our view, there were there was no causal relationship established. But going back to that definition of defamation, it also includes the concept that it is an unprivileged falsehood.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Yes, that's true. And to me, that's where the door is open for the First Amendment to come in.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, we have to define what unprivileged mean, right? Unprivileged means you don't have a right. Essentially, right. And and the First Amendment says, no, you have a right. You absolutely have a right to say that. So did he have a right to say whatever he wanted to say? And to this day, yes, he does have the right to say that. Now the flip side of that gets back to, okay, then the other elements of defamation would come into play to see if there's any consequences for some of that, because you can't do anything that harms other people.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Well, let me let me uh go back to and just so the audience is kind of puts this in context. I did the Vodir in this case. And in the Var deer, we had strategized that we wanted to establish some parameters around people's feelings about the First Amendment. And one of the cases I wanted to bring out was the case involving the Nazi March in Skokie, Illinois, a very famous Supreme Court case. And of course, the general consensus among our members of our firm was we didn't want to get into that kind of a hot topic in the voidier and establish our connection to that kind of thinking. But uh as I conveyed when we were talking about it, uh that that case was one of my defining moments in in my um jurisprudence development, I guess I can call it, regarding the First Amendment, because it bothered me. When when I read that case in Conlaw, you know, second year I think it was of law school, Skokie versus Illinois. I'll never forget I just had a visceral response to it because what happened in that case for our audience members is that a group of American Nazis post-war wanted to march through a Jewish community of Holocaust survivors and protest. They wanted to tell a lie to these grieving people. And I just and and the case effectively said that is their right. They have the right to do this. As as much as we hate what they're they stand for and what they were proclaiming, they had a right to do it, even if it were was a falsehood, right? Because it wasn't an unprivileged falsehood. And to me, that that sort of that that case uh impli uh uh uh represents the extreme to which we as Americans believe in that right of free speech. And what's happened, I think, in our society is that the atrocities of the internet uh and what's happened in in the internet over the last decade is it's created a dichotomy of different people, people who Who will say anything they want to say. And there are some who would say you can't do that, right? That goes too far. There should be, as you say, consequences.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, part of the I think differences to distinguish that case from the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses on the yards of African-American families to the Jonesboro Baptist over in Arkansas, where protested back in the early 2000s, soldiers' funerals coming back to the U.S. from Iran and Afghanistan and just saying incredibly vile things. Right. What distinguishes each of those, though, when you dig into it, is first of all, on the cross-burning side, cross-burning is absolutely a privileged speech. You can absolutely do that. You just can't do it on somebody's yard. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, when it gets into a private area. So, but not just physically. So the Nazi side and the Jonesboro side, the court ruled. In the case of the Jonesboro in particular, I recall, because I went back and looked it up as we were prepping for this, they didn't mention the soldiers by name. They were just making general statements, you know, things like, you know, God hates gays and God and you're fighting for unjust wars and whatever. I mean, I mean, but it went really vile stuff. And the Supreme Court said, no, they have a right to say that. They were on public property or other people's private property that they were allowed to be there, so they didn't come on to the family's area, and they didn't mention anybody by name. The case here, which you know, I think it got very minutiae. You could go, well, but they were mentioning the the granddad. Actually, they didn't. They didn't mention it by name. Ryan never did. He just mentioned grandfather and dad. Now they go, yeah, but they're identifiable, maybe. But my point to the whole thing is under our free speech laws, we can say a lot of things and very vile things. You don't have a right not to be offended. You know, you don't have a right against being offended. Right. But what you can't do is go so far that you bring harm to somebody, but then you have to identify, well, what is that harm? Was there real damage there? Did they actually identify somebody? And it gets a little nuanced.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

And then you have the element of knowingly. And then knowing. But yeah, I mean so that's defamation.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Now let's expand that to defamation per se. Yeah. So in Tennessee, we still have the a defamation per se, but most states have have it where defamation per se, which basically means there are like four or five categories of things that you can't say because it is on its face defamatory, which I mentioned some earlier. A communicable disease. You know, you're a you're you're a dishonest business person, et cetera, et cetera. And Tennessee, however, many years ago, I don't know, somewhere between 2014, 2015, 16, somewhere in that area, the legislature did away with what's called presumed damages. So they don't presume the damages, you got to prove them. Is it on its face defamatory? Okay, fine, because it was one of those things, but you have to prove it.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

We still have to prove those damages, that causal lien.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

So part of our problem here was that we were under California substantive law, which if we ever get, you know, uh as a quick aside, this might end up being a three-parter, by the way. But under cal we were under California substantive law. We were in Tennessee, as you said, in federal court under diversity, because Ryan is here. They were from California, the amount in controversy was over $75,000. So it could come into federal court. And they came here because this is where Ryan is at home, and that's typically where you look is to where is the defendant at home, or which state has the what's it called, the closest nexus to the harm, if you will. So they came here. But in doing that, Tennessee has in all states have a thing called a long long arm statute. And they will look and say, okay, under our statutes, can we reach it to another state and say you gotta try it here, or uh involved in all that choice of law provisions, we'll have it here, but we're gonna use the other state's law. We're gonna try it here, but we're gonna use the other state's law as it relates to the substantive portion, not procedures, but how we try evidence and things like that. And under California, unfortunately, it was they do presume damages. And so then the jury's just left up with picking a number, basically, at that point. So that's the difference. That's why they went with per se. We felt that the the per se element was fairly weak, but this goes to the GoFundMe page aspect, because the GoFundMe page, if anybody ever goes out and finds transcripts of the trial, you'll find out that the there was a GoFundMe page set up the day she went or the day after she went missing, and all it said was help find Kylie Rodney, set up by a third party. No beneficiary was listed. I don't know, a few days or a week later, same headline, but now it said it's a benefit for the mother.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Now refresh my memory, the mother wasn't involved in this case.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

The mother was not. She chose not to be involved in the litigation. She was had been divorced from her husband at that time for about 12 years. She wanted nothing to do with the lawsuit at all. And so neither side called her as a witness, primarily because we didn't think she could really add anything. She chose not to. There were some conversations via text and or email that we were able to get brought in at a certain level. In candidate, in retrospect, we might have wanted to have called her just because that would have avoided some of the hearsay arguments that we ran into.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

But just a little bit of background again for the audience. We we didn't get this case until five months prior to the trial. The the prior lawyer withdrew abruptly. Not many weeks before the scheduled trial. It was scheduled back in December of 25, and and the lawyer resigned October.

SPEAKER_03 28:44

I forget the exact date, but somewhere in there. It was a it was probably not more than eight weeks before trial, could have been less. And then, of course, he had to then go find an attorney. Yeah. And eventually got to us. We decided to take it. He went he went to another firm before us. They had it for about a week or thought about it for a week and then turned it down apparently. And so we decided, let's give it a shot. So we took it on and we didn't get it until December. Yeah. And we didn't get the files from the previous attorney until February. Just as a little background, it had been going on for about two years prior to that and a half. Yeah, the they officially filed lawsuit in July of 23. So with the GoFundMe page, they do list mom eventually, and it stayed that way until Kylie is found, and then it changed the headline to something different. And then not long after that, it just changed to support the Rodney family. And our argument was, because there's a thing called oven concerning in defamation law, that the GoFundMe page, his that Ryan's comments about the GoFundMe page possibly being fraudulent, they thought that was defamation per se, because they are part of the Rodney family. And our argument was you're not part of the Rodney family in the context of what was being said on the page, nor did you have anything to do to set it up. You didn't know the person who set it up. The mom was the sole beneficiary of those monies when they were finally released. But that's why they sued for defamation per se, because we were claiming that potentially, or Ryan was saying that was potentially a fraudulent page, and uh and a scam was the actual word he used.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Well, he didn't uh and here's the thing that the in the trial, uh, and not to get too much into our appeal, but in the trial, it was conveyed that he said that that page was uh fraudulent. And he didn't actually say that. He didn't even actually say that that was a scam. He was talking about other YouTube influencers, and how it could be, and how they have used it as scam. And how GoFundMe has been is a place where a lot of catfishers, and for for audience members, those are people who set up fake things and try to get money, if you don't know that phrase, a lot of catfishers, he he said, are on GoFundMe. He said, look at this particular GoFundMe account. It's raised this much money. And so I guess the implication would be it's potentially fraudulent, but he never actually said that. So that that was certainly taken out of context. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Yeah, that that's obviously our view of it. The jury felt otherwise. But we thought it would definitely was, and hence while we're looking at appeals and some other things. But the you know, it I will say, and I I know we're still just talking about the defamation, defamation per se part of it, but it does highlight for anyone out there who is doing a lot of podcasting, blogging, video blogging, running a YouTube channel. Uh I think yes, you have every right to your opinion. Absolutely you do. However, if it crosses a line where it causes damage to another person, and first of all, if it's absolutely true, truth is its own defense. It doesn't mean you won't get sued. You just have to show no, it was actually a true statement. But truth is its own defense here, so an absolute defense. But if you weigh into these areas where it's more opinion or I'm thinking, and by the way, you can't just say, well, in my opinion, boom, you know, and say whatever you want to say, that's not enough under the law. You it has to be a you have to just be discriminating and judicious, if you will, in the words that you do use so that you don't cross into an area that, first of all, is defamation per se. And this happens over and over and over. There was a case a few years back I remember paying attention to, where again, it was an online podcast, and one of the podcasters was expressing her opinion, but her opinion moved into saying things that really were defamation per se, and she said them with a declaratory emphasis, not a, hey, I'm thinking this or I'm hearing that, could that be? And even that gets a little wishy-washy. So I would just encourage anybody who's out there doing these things, express your opinion and how you're processing things. Absolutely. Don't ever hesitate to share your opinion, but don't shoot from the hip so wildly that people can look up and say, Well, wait a minute. So you're saying this about so-and-so, or they hear it and they go, Well, that's just absolutely false. You're putting me, you're saying something false about me, but you're presenting it as fact, or you're putting me into a false light that's not true. And some of those things can be actionable, and you just gotta be a little careful.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Yeah, I mean, I now we're crossing into some some philosophical and jurisprudence kind of things. I mean, you you do have an absolute right to your opinion. And I think it it it is fair to say it is my opinion that Dennis is a slut. I mean, well, that's true, but um sorry, sorry, sorry, Laura. Sorry to say you're saying sorry to my wife. It's not true. But uh you know, that's not defamation per se, because it is my opinion, and it is my privilege to say that. I'm not stating it as a fact. Well, there is it it there is context that has to go around that, though.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

It has to be obviously, yes. You know, so if you if you go online onto a Facebook page and said Dennis Disney's a slut, okay. Well, that is not prefaced with this is my opinion. But the according to case law and Supreme Court law, just because you add the words in my opinion, that m I'll say may not be enough, and in most cases isn't enough. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 35:07

That's perhaps a way to say it. I I I I mean and I'm going back to our case here a little bit, because uh again, for those who uh in the audience who do not know Ryan Upchurch, he expresses his opinion with a fair fairly regular degree of vulgarity, shall we say. A lot of the same adjective, but uh a frequent adjective, right? And I'm sure you can all can fill in the blanks there.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

Well, it's a word that can be used as a noun, a verb, very versatile. Object of a preposition. There's no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

And and so and with a uh a great degree of passion, I will say, also, because again, that's where his his belief about the First Amendment comes in. He does believe he has an absolute right to say anything he wants, any way he wants, any time he wants. And and that was part of the downfall in this case because it doesn't play well to a jury. So I just hesitate to categorize a statement like it's my opinion that, because Ryan did that in almost every instance that that he made these statements.

SPEAKER_03 36:25

And he wasn't interestingly, he wasn't making it about a whole cloth. He actually had videos that we were able to share where he put that statement in context of I saw this and I went down here, and then somebody posted that, so I went down that trail, and this showed up over here. And then you're left to your own devices. Devices, yeah, but I was trying to think your own interpretations of those things. And he expressed that.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

We cannot emphasize that enough. And most of these statements, Ryan did not originate. He was not the originator of the suspicion surrounding this event. He was what shall we call him? A rebroadcaster of these things.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

Well, even in court, when they brought up on cross-examination with him the death certificate that was not fully completed, if you will. There were sections that were there should have checked a box for something, and they didn't. He did misread one line. He goes, Well, here it even says this, and he did misread that line, which they brought back out. But it was in really fine type, very small type, and you could see how that was confusing. And even when they had the autopsy report that was published online, it was not marked completely. So it left not only him, but other YouTubers and bloggers going, Well, they say she drowned, but there's no indication on here where it's supposed to show that they found water in the lungs. Yeah, there was no indication of water in the lungs.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

And he questioned those things. Well, but my point is he wasn't the first to question those things. There were literally thousands of people questioning those things. And as we tried to bring out in the trial, he was one uh among a cacophony of voices expressing doubt and questions about what happened even after her body was found.

SPEAKER_03 38:32

And I do think that if you if you question things, put it in the context of a question, if you will. So some of this can just be presentation, and that's part of what defamation ends up being. It's a falsity presented as fact. Okay, so maybe to your point about how do we say things, some of it could be, I've got a question. Not in my opinion necessarily, but I wouldn't say that all the time. But I could say, let's just think about this. Why is that that way? Why didn't they do this? Should we not be looking at these things? All these questions lead me to the point where I don't know that this is real. And he kept saying that over and over, I don't know. I don't believe it until. And you know, that's hard for some people to get, what do you mean? They're there you you saw videos. Well, he actually he didn't see videos. That was one of the other things. He never saw a photo of her with her car. And he's like, What teenager in America in 2022, even, weren't taking photos in their car, around their car, something, but nothing was ever put out online. And he's not a professional investigator, so he's not going to go digging through archives and paying the fees you got to pay for that these investigators do to dig into some of these areas. No, he's just going by what was online through what other people were saying, and then he would do his own searches after that. And he's going, I can't find anything about this girl, other than they're talking about it, and that's it. And so some of those things led to his opinion that she might not be her identity wasn't who they were purporting it to be. Right. Again, he said it multiple times. I I know they're humans. I mean, I'm not an idiot. I know they're humans. But one of his phrases he told us one time was, hey man, I'm from the country. And if I can't see you and talk to you, how do I know who you are? How do I know that he kept saying it in a very in his own vernacular of how do I know you're real? And again, not meaning that you're not a real person, not a human, but how do I know who you say you're purporting to be?

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Well, he's a very black and white thinker in that regard in particular. So and that kind of uh I guess brings us to this intentional infliction of emotional distress, so that we don't uh leave that part out. I mean, defamation's one thing. And if you make a a privileged statement expressing your opinion, theoretically that should be protected. And we can talk about all the parameters. But uh let's turn a little bit to intentional infliction of emotional distress, because I think that's really the the cause of action that probably caused the most damage in this trial because they had sent a cease and desist letter. There was issues as to whether he had actually seen the letter. It was sent to the wrong addresses, but his lawyer had produced a copy, and and so there were issues surrounding that. But there's no doubt that the letter was sent and that he continued making those statements after the letter was received. So that fed into the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim. Tell the audience a little bit about the elements of that and and how it kind of aggravates the situation.

SPEAKER_03 41:56

Yeah, there's a couple elements to it. It's called an intentional tort. And it first of all, it's got to be intentional. That's why the eye is there. So you have intentional infliction of emotional distress, or you have negligent infliction of emotional distress. Negligent infliction brings on this whole parts of duty to another person. Did you break that duty, et cetera, et cetera? Intentional means no, I intended to do it. I intended to create distress in your world. And part of that, part of the elements there, the big ones are that you have to have done, or in this case, said something that is so outrageous, and this is the line I kept word, I kept trying to drive home to the jury, that it it goes beyond all. The element says A-L-L because all reasonable actions or words that normal civilized society would tolerate. And I tried to stress to them, because we had other instances of people who said really vile things, they were never sued by the same people, by the same by the same replactives here. And what they were saying about Ryan was well, he says, Granddad's fake, dad's fake, Kylie's fake, GoFummy's a scam. That is so outrageous that it goes beyond all reasonable. Yeah, I mean, I And those are the two things. But the other part about the intentional part we kept saying was Ryan's 2,000 miles away. He doesn't know these people. Right. Matter of fact, he didn't even know their names till late in the process, and he had to start by doing a search of who is Kylie Rodney's dad. Because he didn't have a name for any of that. And even when it came up, it came up with his business, not with his name. So, all that to say, we kept stressing how can it be intentional if he never knew them, he never talked to them, he never had any interactions with them, he lives 2,000 miles away. Where's the intention to cause those people, those specific people, harm and distress? Because you get into this area of that harm has to be somewhat of and concerning those people. Same with defamation, the comments have to be of. Concerning them. And we kept arguing it's not oven concerning them. None of this is of and concerning them, uh, if you will. And then the the outrageous statements or the outrageous threshold you have to cross over is a really high threshold. But the jury, you know, felt that Ryan got there. Now, one of the ways they felt he got there was because the judge allowed him. We kept objecting. It was became a standing objection we had. They only sued over four comments, that the last one being in December of 2022, but they kept bringing in additional comments throughout 2023 that he had made, early, especially early 23. And they used that to leverage this idea that, well, it had to be intentional because he kept talking about it. Well, the reason he kept talking about it was because other people were talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Well, and because he had been sued. I mean, yes, and and so this this concept of reasonable or or beyond all bounds of reasonableness uh is something that I think was missed in this case. And you you look at some of the examples you just gave of the military protesters, you know, alleging things about people, they didn't mention them by name, but they were outrageous in many ways. But the Supreme Court says not beyond all reasonable bounds, right? Now, so and that gets me back to the Nazi situation and the cross-burning situation. I mean, most of us find those kind of things pretty outrageous. But again, is it beyond all reasonable bounds? And so that gets us back to that privilege we have been talking about, the the privilege that all U.S. citizens share, and that's the freedom of speech and freedom freedom to to uh express uh an opinion. So uh you know, let's talk quickly about the Alex Jones case and how that differs. Because what he said in that case, what Alex Jones said, is that the whole uh school shooting was all fake. It was just actors. How is that different from what we have in the Ryan Up Church?

SPEAKER_03 46:18

Well, Ryan's not doubting that there was an incident because he saw them pull the car, uh he saw the AWP video and paid the reward to them. He saw the car come out, he know they found a body in there. The difference is he wasn't sure who the body was. That really is what it's what it comes down to. Whereas Alex Jones, he said the whole thing's fake. Ryan was saying parts of this don't sound right. Now he did make some comments about the way the car was extracted out of the lake and some of it didn't usually it almost looked like it was staged to some degree. He did bring some of that in. I think that was you know not really considered very much. But he again, unlike Alex Jones, where the way I understand it on that case, that he said the whole thing was this way.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

Yeah. And he was the only one saying that's the that to me, that's the biggest distinguisher here is that uh in in Ryan's case, everybody was talking about this. There were literally millions of people online. And not expressing asking questions. Asking questions, expressing doubt. And the Alex Jones case, I'm not aware of any other person on earth that questioned whether there was a school shooting and whether those people lost their children.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Maybe some sycophant of Alex Jones, but he they were not very vocal or very visible.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:44

I mean, with with this case, with our case, at that time, it was worldwide news. And worldwide questions about what happened to her. And and you know, and then when they found the car and they found her body, unfortunately, the way some of that got handled just kept those same people asking questions, but it wasn't Solar Ryan.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

You're exactly right. Okay, audience. So Dennis had a phone call to get to, so we are going to uh wrap this up um talking about this case. And uh we plan to come back and talk more about what happens next um in our next episode, um, where we go from here and and and what we do on the appeal. We're not gonna give you specifics, but we will, you know, talk a little bit about the process and the motions that we're going to file to follow up on the case and the verdict. So thank you for joining us. If again, if you have questions, uh go to uh or send us send us uh questions at musicroedealmakers.com or call us at 877 7 Dealmakers. We appreciate you. And I hope you have a good two weeks.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Music Row Dealmakers is a production of Shroom Disney and Associates, recorded on location on Music Row, the heart of Music City, Nashville. Subscribe to future episodes wherever you enjoy your podcasts.