WASHINGTON — Cherokee County Commissioner Dr. Daniel Eichenbaum and Edward Figueroa, a former police officer, used to be friendly. They were both members of a group preparing for an apocalypse-type scenario, and they owned neighboring plots of land in Murphy, a small town in western North Carolina.
After a falling out over the group’s direction, however, they became political opponents, battling last year for a seat on the county’s board of commissioners. The race got ugly and, as it often does in down-ballot contests, it got personal.
Eichenbaum soundly defeated Figueroa in the November election. But the fight isn’t over. Instead, it’s moved to the courthouse, where Eichenbaum, who is also an ophthalmologist and radio show host, is suing his former rival for allegedly slandering his reputation during the campaign.
For now, the case is still in the early stages, and it’s not clear whether it will proceed to mediation or a trial. But in either scenario, the case could affect what kinds of speech are kosher in a campaign context, at least in North Carolina. Eichenbaum and Figueroa’s dispute arrives at a time when laws that prohibit lying in political campaigns are looking increasingly vulnerable — for instance, one such Ohio law barring false statements was struck down in September.
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David Ardia, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and co-director of UNC’s Center for Media Law and Policy, called the legal dispute a “unique situation,” as the winning candidate is suing the losing one. Usually it’s the other way around, as in the case of a defamation suit filed last week by a failed Republican challenger to Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.).
“These cases are quite rare — public officials like this typically don’t file these kinds of claims because the difficulty of winning the cases is very high,” Ardia told HuffPost. “We have more or less developed a legal system that leaves it to public officials to fix their reputations through their own channels of communication themselves, rather than through the courthouse.”
Courts tend to be more sympathetic toward business reputations than personal reputations, making it easier in those cases to prove damages. At the same time, plaintiffs do sometimes file suit in order to silence their critics.
“You always have to wonder in these cases, what is the goal of the plaintiff? What do they want in the end?” said Ardia. “There’s some value in that signaling function. Perhaps that’s what’s happening here — a lawsuit is also a way to inflict harm on the person, and that can also be a motivation.”
