Judge Timothy Garcia dismissed four lawsuits Monday filed by a former SUN employee in state District Court in Tierra Amarilla against the SUN and News Editor Kevin Bersett.
Garcia said he found all of former reporter Nancy Lewis’ claims “totally frivolous” and admonished Lewis several times for her behavior toward the SUN.
“They haven’t violated the law, and they haven’t violated any of your rights,” Garcia said to Lewis during his ruling.
Lewis had filed the lawsuits in July 2007 about two months after she was fired from the SUN and in the same month Garcia had granted a permanent restraining order against Lewis that prohibited her from contacting Bersett and acting as a representative of the SUN. That order had been filed after Lewis had threatened Bersett over the phone and had falsely accused the SUN of holding people hostages.
Three of the four lawsuits were dismissed in Rio Arriba County Magistrate Court in October but were consolidated with the fourth case (which had been filed in District Court) when Lewis appealed.
Lewis made four main claims and requested from the courts:
•$10,000 for reckless endangerment and forgery. Lewis claimed Bersett told her to “stalk” State Police Capt. Gerald Anderson for an assignment, and had included her name on a public records request email sent by Bersett to a public information officer, which she said had been done without her permission. The request was to inspect police dispatch logs.
• $3,954 for breach of contract. Lewis claimed the SUN had improperly fired her before a three-month review.
• $2,317.50 for unpaid overtime work, an advance and phone and gas reimbursements. Lewis claimed she had worked 90 hours of overtime during the three weeks she worked for the SUN prior to her termination.
• $10 million in state District Court. This suit concerned material Lewis wrote while an employee of the SUN. Lewis charged the SUN with plagiarism, copyright infringement and defamation of character for publishing an article she wrote after she was terminated.
Garcia dismissed the final claim because it was not filed in the proper venue, which in this case would have been federal court. He also stated that since the contract never explicitly gave ownership of any work she did while employed with the SUN, that meant the SUN owned the work.
Garcia ruled that Lewis had been justifiably terminated May 31, 2007, for being argumentative, bringing in story ideas that had nothing to do with her beat as the cops and courts reporter and claiming to have bought marijuana in pursuit of a story. He said since Lewis was working under an at-will contract she could be fired since she did not present any evidence that she was fired for an illegal reason or that she was a member of a protected class.
The claim for unpaid overtime was dismissed after the SUN presented evidence that her own time sheets showed she had not worked any overtime, and she failed to present any evidence that she had worked overtime. Instead, Garcia determined that Lewis owed the SUN the amount of $111.06 because she failed to return a portion of the salary advance paid by the SUN on her first day of work, May 14, 2007.
He also determined that Lewis was never asked to stalk Anderson as she had claimed in the lawsuit, a claim which Bersett denied in the Magistrate and District courts and one in which Lewis presented no evidence of to support her claim. Her forgery claim was dismissed after the SUN argued that the email did not contain her signature and no harm was done by sending it.
Lewis, who represented herself, called no witnesses during the seven-hour long trial, while Bersett and SUN Managing Editor R. Braiden Trapp testified for the defense.
Garcia awarded the SUN yet to be determined attorney fees and costs and told Lewis she still owed the witnesses she had called for a pretrial hearing unpaid subpoena fees.
During his ruling, Garcia repeatedly said he was troubled by Lewis’ correspondence and behavior. About two weeks prior to the trial, Lewis filed a motion to allow “Brown Dog” to attend the trial. The motion states, “Brown Dog provides Plaintiff with protection through intimidation of her enemies, whose number grows daily.” The motion goes on to state, “Her (Brown Dog) curiosity has been piqued by the endless legal arguments Plaintiff poses; sometimes Brown Dog indicates an opinion and sometimes not” and “Brown Dog has an uncanny ability to hone in on evil people instantaneously, and so an added advantage to allowing her to accompany Plaintiff into the Courtroom is that should the Judge have any doubt as to the guilt of any accused, Brown Dog will intuit that and advise the Judge in her own way.”
Lewis was not accompanied by a dog at court. She did spend about three hours during the trial presenting exhibits some of which had no relation to the case including one torn piece of paper that she said showed, “That God has his hand in journalism.”
During the course of the trial, Lewis admitted to previously being arrested for bringing false charges, stalking, making harassing phone calls and attempted murder. Garcia said he was “extremely” troubled by a letter Lewis faxed in June to SUN attorney Daniel Yohalem that ordered him to leave the city within an hour or else the police would arrest him.
“I find it extremely threatening,” Garcia said.
Although Lewis had made claims in her lawsuits about being endangered by the SUN, Garcia said he would be more afraid of her if he was a SUN employee.
“I think you have been threatening to them,” he said.
Garcia said he would be expanding Bersett’s restraining order to include protection for all SUN employees, their families and Yohalem. He said it would be within the SUN’s rights to file an abuse of process lawsuit against Lewis if she took the company to court again over any past issues.
“These people aren’t doing anything to you,” Garcia said to Lewis. “Leave them alone. That’s the bottom line.”
He told her to “pack a toothbrush” and expect jail time if she violates the provisions in the permanent restraining order.
“Effectively, these people shouldn’t hear from you again,” Garcia said.