Bluffton mayor’s defamation lawsuit against critic heads to trial. Here’s what we know
The mayor of Bluffton’s pending defamation lawsuit against longtime government critic Skip Hoagland is going to trial Wednesday after more than four years of court filings and depositions.
But don’t expect Hoagland to voluntarily show up before the 12-person jury.
Hoagland, who is known for his long-winded emails and rants during public comment periods at local government meetings, told a reporter Monday that he will not attend the trial in Beaufort.
“You can’t come after me for something I did not commit,” said Hoagland, who is representing himself in the lawsuit brought by Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka in 2017.
Hoagland, a part-time Windmill Harbour resident on Hilton Head Island, previously fired a lawyer that his insurance company had hired to defend him in the case.
Sulka’s lawsuit revolves around emails that Hoagland sent in 2015 and 2017 to several people, including S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson.
The emails, her lawsuit alleges, included defamatory statements about Sulka.
In one of the emails, Hoagland “falsely accused the Plaintiff of a crime and of being unfit for her office of mayor,” the lawsuit says.
“An examination of the Defendant’s rambling and at times incoherent emails can lead to only one conclusion: The Defendant had every reason to know that his statements lacked veracity, yet he continued to publish them with vigor,” Sulka’s lawyers wrote in a 2019 court filing.
Her lawyers argued that Hoagland had waged a “campaign” of defamation against Sulka after she decided to assist the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce with a membership drive in 2015. Then-Bluffton Town Manager Marc Orlando served as an event chair and about 12 town employees “participated as staff volunteers” during the drive, the lawyers wrote.
Hoagland is a vocal critic of the chamber, which has been blasted by some elected officials in recent years for its failure to divulge how it spends public money, such as $3.3 million in funds it used for marketing in fiscal year 2019.
“She defamed herself. I didn’t defame her,” Hoagland said Monday. “I hold people accountable, that’s what I’m doing.”
He said he has the right to criticize public officials under the First Amendment.
“If this case is lost from corruption or judicial malfeasance, every SC citizen can be sued, financially destroyed by frivolous defamation lawsuits,” Hoagland added in a Tuesday email.
When asked about Hoagland’s plan to skip the Wednesday court proceedings, Daniel Henderson, a lawyer for Sulka, declined to comment on trial preparations.
Henderson, though, said he expects the trial to “definitely” last until Thursday. Henderson is an attorney at the Hampton-based Parker Law Group.
Sulka, who was first elected as mayor in 2008, has asked the jury to determine her economic loss. She is seeking both actual and punitive damages.
Her legal team’s witness list includes Orlando, the former Bluffton town manager and current Hilton Head town manager; Larry Toomer, a Bluffton Town Council member; and Terry Finger, the town attorney, among others, according to a document that Hoagland sent to a reporter.
Circuit Court Judge Maite Murphy is presiding over the trial, which is expected to begin at about 9:30 a.m. at the Beaufort County Courthouse.
What’s in the emails?
In a 2019 court filing, Sulka’s lawyers wrote that Hoagland took issue with Sulka’s decision to assist the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce with its membership drive, “believing that it unfairly benefited” the Hilton Head chamber at the expense of the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce.
Hoagland in a 2015 email to Wilson, the state attorney general, Sulka, Orlando, Finger, lawmakers and others wrote that “whoever is behind this I demand a full investigation and those responsible terminated and replaced immediately.”
“Mayor Sulka I hope you fully understand the severity of this as a public official if this is true on using public funds to attempt to put one business out of business,” Hoagland wrote.
Finger, the town attorney, later contacted Hoagland.
“I think your emails clearly defame Mayor Sulka, are not factual, and should be retracted,” Finger wrote in an email.
At the end of the year, Hoagland sent another email to several people, writing that “I actually am calling for your removal from office (Sulka) and investigation on all your dealings based on what you did. It is my position and others you broke the law and no one is beyond the law.”
Hoagland then in 2016 filed a complaint with the State Ethics Commission against Sulka, accusing her of voting in favor of land purchases that financially benefited her employer, Carson Realty, or other real estate agents at Carson.
The ethics commission eventually cleared Sulka of three allegations that she violated the state ethics law, accepting from Sulka an unusual statement in which she retroactively recused herself from a vote that occurred three years earlier, according to previous reporting from The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Hoagland in 2017 sent another email.
“What are you, all going to do about our lying crooked, corrupt real estate agent Mayor Lisa Sulka? Add Town manager Marc Orlando. How much of her incompetent corrupt happy horse manure are we all supposed to stand ? You understand she illegally used Town employees to profit a private corporation correct ? Not to mention her real estate dealings,” Hoagland wrote to Wilson and others.
Sulka’s lawyers in her lawsuit argued that Hoagland’s “defamatory statements” were published with malice and harmed the mayor’s reputation.
A lawyer that Hoagland’s insurance company had hired to defend him, meanwhile, in a 2019 court filing wrote that “it is undisputed” that Hoagland “subjectively believes” his criticism to be true.
“All of Hoagland’s speech regarding Plaintiff is political, involves matter of public concern, or otherwise concerns Plaintiff as a public official,” wrote the lawyer, Barrett Brewer, who Hoagland eventually fired.
That means, Brewer argued at the time, that the First Amendment applies to all of Hoagland’s statements in the case.
The Likins lawsuit
This is not the first time an elected official has sued Hoagland.
A former Hilton Head Town Council member, Kim Likins, filed a lawsuit against Hoagland in 2015 alleging that he defamed her. Hoagland had turned his ire toward Likens after she supported the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce’s lucrative contract with the town.
In a series of 2015 phone calls and emails to Likins’ bosses — board members of the Boys & Girls Club of Hilton Head Island — Hoagland, a retired businessman, proclaimed Likins unfit to serve as the club’s director.
The matter was set to go to trial in 2020 but instead ended abruptly when Likins received a settlement in a related case against Hoagland’s insurance company and dropped her libel charges. The amount was not disclosed at the time, The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette reported.
Hoagland, though, was also found to be in both civil and criminal contempt of court after a judge learned that Hoagland had defied his order to not talk about the case.
Hoagland was sentenced to 30 days in jail and a $2,500 fine, but the judge said the sentence would be suspended to 100 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine if Hoagland paid the $1,000 fine and started community service within 30 days of the judge’s sentencing order.
For the civil violation, Hoagland was told to pay Likins’ attorney fees, which amounted to about $6,103.
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 3:07 PM.
