I owe a rockpit more than $4 million because I said it was bad for the environment

By MAGGIE HURCHALLA

I've been SLAPPED. Brutally.  

I owe a rockpit $4.4 million.

In 2008, Lake Point LLC got special permission to change a failed subdivision in western Martin County, Florida, into a rock-mining project. The company said it was designed to help save the Everglades, the Wild & Scenic Loxahatchee River and the St. Lucie Estuary. I questioned whether a rockpit could provide those benefits. 

The 2008 recession made rock mining a losing business. In 2012, the owners proposed to join up with American Water Company to try to sell water to the city of West Palm Beach. 

I, along with others, objected on the grounds that it's not legal to sell Florida water. I also asked lots of questions about how the promised benefits would be accomplished.  

County staff reviewed the project and told Lake Point that it was in violation, because it was mining outside of agreed-on limits. 

Lake Point then sued the South Florida Water Management District, Martin County — and me. It was a “strategic lawsuit against public participation” — SLAPP.

Criticizing the project cost me a lot of time and money. I still have large lawyer bills to pay. I feel like the kid who got my face rubbed in the mud by the playground bully. 

That said, I’m not sorry I spent seven years defending the First Amendment against a vengeful billionaire. I am not crushed or intimidated. On Valentine’s Day, a new friend and admirer of the First Amendment brought me a large box of chocolates. I decided that if I ate them all for breakfast Lake Point couldn’t garnish them.  

I had a legion of people, including family and friends and people I never met, rooting for me on behalf of the First Amendment. I had the best good-guy legal team you could imagine. 

My homeowner's insurance company enthusiastically took on my defense. 

George Lindemann Jr., one of Lake Point’s principals, had unlimited resources and a civil court system that a retired judge told me was meant for corporations, not people. 

Because of what I went through, I am worried about the First Amendment rights we all thought we had. I learned a lot about why we should not leave decisions about what’s right when it comes to public-policy issues to a single judge and jury. 

It started when I received a letter from Lindemann’s lawyers telling me I must apologize for all the things I said in a public email I sent to the Martin County Commission in January 2013. I didn't because all the things I said were true. 

The next month, Lake Point sued the county, the water managers and then me. I informed my insurance company, which directed me to let the law firm they hired direct my defense. I did. The firm did an excellent job.

Then, 17 months later, without notice, the company announced I did not have coverage and it would not allow me to hire the firm to continue to defend me. It took until 2016 to get the records they had. ‘

We didn’t get to trial until 2018 because dragging out the case is part of  SLAPPers’ punishment strategy.

The circuit judge had strong opinions about the case. Before it started, he told us the trial would not take long “She interfered with a contract. The only issue should be how much the damages are.”  

Prior to the trial, the judge agreed to Lake Point’s request to bar certain testimony. There could be no mention of the Lindemann family’s vast wealth, or any mention of the fact that Lindemann had served time in federal prison for having his show horse killed for the insurance money. That might prejudice the jury against Lake Point.  

I was not allowed to say why I sent emails instead of appearing at meetings in Martin. My little brother and I were taking turns staying in Miami with my sister who had advanced Parkinson’s disease. The judge said that might bias the jury in my favor. 

The second day of the trial, the judge asked me and my lawyers to meet in his chambers. He told me that he knew I meant well, but I had gone too far. He said he had taken the liberty of drafting a letter of apology for me to sign. He said he was sure Lake Point would let me off if I apologized and agreed not to criticize the project in the future. 

I told him the issue was a matter of principle with me. I knew I told the truth. I could not say I lied. We asked the judge to recuse himself from the case. He refused. 

In another odd twist, I learned that trial lawyers don’t have to tell the truth. They are not under oath and have something they call “litigation privilege.”

The judge ruled that anyone who criticized a multimillion-dollar business had a duty to preserve all correspondence from their very first comments. I freely admitted that, prior to the lawsuit, I regularly deleted emails so my mailbox would not get too full. The judge told the jury that they could make an “adverse inference.” They could assume that I deleted incriminating emails and could use that as evidence in deciding if I was guilty.

 Even with that stacked deck, I had faith in the jury. I had reputable expert witnesses to verify the truth of my statements. 

Lake Point painted me as a person who pretended to be an environmentalist, but had decided to spend her life destroying Lindemann’s company because she hated small businesses.  It seemed ludicrous to suggest that while people I loved were dying, I was concentrating on a plot to destroy Lindemann.

There were some things I hadn’t understood about juries. 

Mark Twain once pointed out that the problem with the jury system was that only those who swore they knew nothing about community issues and had no opinions were allowed to serve on juries.  

I found that jurors can get away with lying. We learned after the trial that the jury foreman had not included on his sworn jury form that he had been convicted in the Florida Keys of spearing female lobster with eggs, which is illegal. Though I’m not a female lobster, that information would have been more than enough to dismiss him from the jury pool — first, for his lack of candor and, second, for clear bias against environmental laws. 

The jury made no “finding of facts” on which it based its decision. It simply found me guilty of “tortious interference.” They took just 45 minutes and obviously did not take time to read the emails and the evidence. They levied the exact amount of damages Lake Point asked for.  

None of this should have happened, but when a deep-pocketed corporation SLAPPs an individual or a small business, such things are more likely.  

A three-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal agreed with Lake Point’s contention that I had waived my First Amendment rights. They agreed with all of the “facts of the case” that Lake Point supplied to them. They apparently did not review the evidence that provided a very different set of facts. They refused to grant a new trial in spite of the trial judge’s conduct or the juror’s misconduct. 

The panel said I said that the benefits of the project had not been documented. They said that was a lie because there were documents, even if they didn’t prove the benefits. They also said that being “influential” or talking to officials who were your friends was evidence of actual malice. 

 The full court of the Fourth DCA, the Florida Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court all refused — without comment — to review the case.  

I lost.  

Some awful new precedents have been set that can affect everyone on all sides of every public issue. 

The First Amendment is not dead, but it’s dangling. All of us need to work together to save it. 

Maggy Hurchalla is an environmental activist in Martin County, Florida. She is a former Martin County commissioner.