The Delaware Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision dismissing a defamation lawsuit by an attorney claiming he was forced to resign from his Wilmington law firm after becoming a victim of “cancel culture” – a form of ostracizing a person or organization for something they have said or done.
The Delaware Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed a Superior Court’s decision dismissing Scott D. Cousins’ lawsuit because the lower court ruled last year that the comments Wilmington attorney Rosemary S. Goodier sent in an email to Cousins’ former employerwere her opinion and “protected by constitutional privilege.”
“The Supreme Court’s opinion was most thorough and scholarly and we are delighted by the outcome, vindicating Ms. Goodier’s constitutional right to express her sincerely held opinions on matters of public concern respecting the dignity of Native Americans and the use of American Indian iconography in sports logos,” said her attorney, Rodney Smolla, former dean of Widener University Delaware Law School and now president of Vermont Law and Graduate School.
In his lawsuit filed in November 2020, Cousins said Goodier sent an email to his former employer, Wilmington’s Bayard Firm, claiming he was “protecting his white, Christian heritage” because of a lawsuit he filed in Pennsylvania in the summer trying to save Unionville High School’s Indian mascot.
Both Cousins and Goodier are Pennsylvania residents, but at the time the email was sent the two practiced law in Delaware. Goodier is now inactive, according to the Delaware Courts’ public lawyer database.
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In its 48-page opinion, the Supreme Court wrote that Cousins’ choice to lead the charge on the “controversial and sensitive public debate” carried a predictable consequence that others of a different mind would exercise their own First Amendment rights in opposition.
“We offer no opinion on the merits of the controversy underlying the Unionville Lawsuit,” the Court wrote. “Nor do we pass judgment on the civility of the means Goodier chose to air her grievance about the lawsuit. Our concern here is limited to whether her response gives rise to actionable state tort claims in light of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. We hold that it does not and therefore affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.”
Goodier’s Aug. 5, 2020, email had the subject line: “Recent Filed Lawsuit Against Unionville Chadds Ford School District Reflects poorly on The Bayard Firm,” and according to Cousins’ suit, it contained at least three false, unprivileged and defamatory statements accusing Cousins of engaging in multiple types of racist and religiously bigoted conduct.
The lawsuit also said Goodier took to social media attacking Cousins to the point where an administrator for the Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Community Facebook page removed her posts and those of others siding with her.
A day after Goodier emailed Bayard, the lawsuit said Cousins was contacted by the firm’s president and told to resign.
“The tactics by the adherents of cancel culture (particularly in a social media mob) are to shut down debate and, in this and many instances, to destroy the livelihood of the speaker, as occurred here when [Cousins] was forced to resign his employment by his employer,” his lawsuit stated.
Cousins had been director of Bayard and the chair of the firm’s business restructuring and liquidations group.
“This loss is disappointing,” said Thomas S. Neuberger, one of Cousins’ attorneys. “But we now know that the former collegiality of the Delaware Bar is over and the law is that the rules of cancel culture allow one Liberal lawyer to destroy a Christian lawyer’s reputation by falsely calling him a racist.”
After leaving Bayard, Cousins started Cousins Law.
“Yes, he did start his own firm,” Neuberger said, “since no one here in Delaware or out-of-state would hire him due to his being canceled in the legal community.”
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Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.
