Woman’s Crusade Against Bar Spawns Free Speech Case
In fact, the figure at the center of the case, a Christian evangelist in Newport Beach, makes a highly unlikely 1st Amendment hero. Anne Lemen, 58, says she doesn’t care about free speech or the constitutional question that her case, like the Pentagon Papers before it, poses: When may government prevent speech before it has occurred?
Lemen just wants to tell people that she believes her nemesis, the Village Inn on Balboa Island, is mafia, as are her former husband and the guards at a local church, and the police are in cahoots. And, she wonders aloud, why would anyone accuse an innocent Christian woman of lying?
On top of that, Lemen contended, "the bar," as she calls the Village Inn, has tried to murder her.
Lemen owns a cottage only feet from the restaurant and led a campaign to restrict it because she said it disrupted the neighborhood. Aric Toll, 41, a chef who bought the restaurant and bar with his parents, filed a defamation lawsuit against Lemen, saying she was ruining his business.
After a trial, a judge ordered Lemen to stop videotaping Toll’s customers and barred her from telling anyone that the bar makes sex videos, dabbles in child pornography, distributes illegal drugs, encourages lesbian activities, has mafia links, is a whorehouse or sells tainted food — all false statements, the court said, that Lemen had made. She appealed the order before it could be enforced.
Courts around the country have disagreed over whether such "prior restraint" orders in defamation cases are constitutional, and cases involving them are multiplying as people sue to stop alleged defamation on the Internet. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld prior restraint in cases of national security and obscenity, but not in a defamation complaint. When it took up the question in a case brought by the late attorney Johnnie Cochran against a picket, the high court said only that the order against the picket was unconstitutionally broad.
Duke University constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky is paying his own way to California and working free of charge to tell the California Supreme Court today that the order violates Lemen’s right to free speech.
If Lemen loses, such court orders might become "a regular remedy in defamation cases," Chemerinsky said. Newspapers could even be barred from covering a person who won one, he said. In his view, the only appropriate remedy for defamation is monetary damages.
Balboa Island is a densely packed maze of mostly small but expensive homes, some of which are adjacent to stores and restaurants. The Newport Beach island’s reputation for rowdy nightlife has given way to a sedate atmosphere as rising home prices have turned vacation rentals into year-round homes.
The bar has been on Marine Avenue since the 1930s, and regulars reportedly have included James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Bing Crosby. Lemen’s dispute with Toll began when he and his family bought it in November 2000. Some neighbors, including Lemen, had also feuded with the previous owner.
