Georgia Supreme Court docket guidelines ACLU defamation lawsuit

The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that a lower court made an error in denying a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union to dismiss a defamation suit brought by a former Glynn County public attorney.

In the case of ACLU, Inc. v. The court overturned the state appeals court’s decision confirming the first instance court’s denial of the ACLU’s motion and referred the case back to the appellate court with instructions to return it to the trial court to refer Zeh’s inquiries decide.

Billy Reid Zeh is a controversial local Glynn County attorney who has faced many legal troubles. In 2019, he surrendered to the police for aggravated assault, robbery, assault and kidnapping.

Zeh was also a local public defender, and in a 2018 blog post the ACLU called him “Georgia’s crooked public defender.”

“As a public defender for Glynn County, Georgia, Reid Zeh is tasked with advocating for the weakest members of his community when they encounter the criminal justice system,” the ACLU blog post said. “Instead of doing his job, however, Zeh routinely ignores his customers or – worse still – blackmails them in order to enrich himself.”

The ACLU accused Zeh of billing a local and his then 75-year-old mother for $ 2,500 for legal services that should have been free.

“Glynn County pays Zeh a flat fee to represent people who otherwise cannot afford legal representation in their criminal proceedings,” the ACLU said, adding that the woman and her son did not know that Zeh was legally or ethically unaware Can demand payment from them.

Zeh sued the ACLU for defamation. The ACLU wanted to dismiss Zeh’s lawsuit as unfounded, saying Zeh could not show that the blog post was published with genuine malice.

But in a statement released Monday, Georgia Chief Justice David Nahmias said the standard of actual malice applied in this case.

“The facts set out in the pleadings and affidavits of the defamation case show that Zeh was appointed to his position to provide public defense services to the state court on all offenses and that he was legally responsible for determining whether a defendant in a criminal offense was entitled to a public defender because of indigence, ”wrote Nahmias. “The proper provision of constitutionally required legal representation for destitute criminal defendants in Glynn County is a matter in which the public has an independent interest.”

“Despite its arguments that the ACLU blog post was based on untrustworthy allegations brought against him by plaintiffs in a separate federal trial, and that the ACLU should have investigated the veracity of those allegations by reviewing public court records, the Supreme Court found that the allegations “were not published lightly,” said Nahmais.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a Georgia Press Educational Foundation project.