Jury awards $50M to Bluffton mayor in defamation suit against longtime local critic
A Beaufort County jury on Thursday awarded a total of $50 million in damages to the mayor of Bluffton in a defamation case against a longtime government critic.
The 12-member jury returned its first verdict at about 2 p.m. after less than two hours of deliberations, deciding that Skip Hoagland must pay $40 million in actual damages to Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka, who had filed a libel lawsuit against him in 2017.
The jury then returned its second verdict around 3 p.m. following roughly an hour of deliberations, deciding that Hoagland must pay $10 million in punitive damages to Sulka.
Hoagland was not in the courtroom when the verdicts were read. Informed of the jury’s decision in a Thursday phone call, Hoagland laughed and said, “that’s a joke, right? ... That’s insanity.”
Sulka hugged her lawyers and her husband after the first verdict was read, telling a reporter later that she did not know what else to say, having testified during the trial.
Daniel Henderson, one of Sulka’s lawyers, said he was “very grateful to this Beaufort jury.”
The multimillion-dollar verdicts followed a two-day trial that was relatively mundane, with Hoagland absent. He decided to avoid the court proceedings and instead email his thoughts to the trial judge, S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson and others.
“I have not committed violations to any law. There is zero evidence I defamed anyone,” Hoagland wrote at about 8 p.m. Wednesday. “The first amendment allows me to exercise my free speech rights to criticize, and shed light on, public corruption.”
Hoagland in an email late Monday to the Beaufort County Clerk of Court, among others, also wrote, “Let the jury rule on ambulance chasing Parkers circus act and theatrical play, award her 10 million please.”
John Parker is one of Sulka’s lawyers.
Hoagland, who represented himself in the lawsuit, added Thursday that he was actually happy with the trial’s outcome because it proved there’s “more corruption” in South Carolina.
“This case was all predetermined, a sham, Judicial Malfeasance. Not one single bit of evidence or law was provided that I defamed Ms. Sulka versus exercising my full lawful rights under the First Amendment (guaranteeing) Free Speech,” Hoagland wrote in a statement. “I will now seek damages for violations to my First Amendment Rights caused by this lawless, filthy, frivolous defamation lawsuit to silence a critics voice.”
Hoagland, a part-time Windmill Harbour resident at the entrance to Hilton Head Island, previously fired a lawyer that his insurance company had hired to defend him in the case.
Sulka’s lawsuit revolved around emails that Hoagland sent in 2015 and 2017 to several people, including Wilson.
The emails, Sulka alleged, included defamatory statements about her.
In one of the emails, for example, Hoagland “falsely accused the Plaintiff of a crime and of being unfit for her office of mayor,” the lawsuit said.
“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.
The mayor’s lawyers — Henderson and Parker — both of the Hampton-based Parker Law Group, during the trial spent hours asking their witnesses to read Hoagland’s emails aloud and explain the critic’s impact on Sulka.
“I’ve seen it affect her life,” former Bluffton Town Manager Marc Orlando said. “I’ve seen it affect her ability to stay focused as a human being, as a mom, as a wife, as a mayor. I’ve seen it affect relationships.”
The trial included exchanges like this:
“Are you a crook?” Parker asked Sulka, who spent hours on the witness stand.
“No,” the mayor replied.
“Where does he get this from?” asked Parker, referring to Hoagland.
“I think he truly believes ... he makes it up and he believes it’s true,” Sulka said.
“It really hits your psyche, it really affects you,” she added. “I am his target now, personally.”
Hoagland is a frequent and vocal critic of the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, 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.
It’s a ‘crusade,’ lawyer says
Henderson, one of Sulka’s lawyers, said Hoagland began a “crusade” against the mayor after a 2015 Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce membership drive.
The town of Bluffton had assisted the chamber with its membership drive, which Hoagland believed “unfairly benefited” the Hilton Head chamber at the expense of the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, Sulka’s lawyers wrote in a 2019 court filing.
Orlando testified Wednesday that he had made the decision to assist the chamber with its drive. “I did not communicate with Lisa to ask, nor did Lisa ask me, to participate in the membership drive,” Orlando, who is now the Hilton Head town manager, told jurors.
Orlando served as an event chair and about 12 town employees “participated as staff volunteers,” Sulka’s lawyers wrote in 2019.
The town’s assistance with the drive seemed to infuriate Hoagland.
Hoagland in a 2015 email to Wilson, the state attorney general, Sulka, Orlando, Bluffton Town Attorney Terry 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 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 the lawsuit argued that Hoagland’s “defamatory statements” were published with malice and harmed the mayor’s reputation.
The 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.
Henderson, one of Sulka’s lawyers, countered that reasoning in court Thursday.
“The First Amendment is precious. ... I know that you would fight for it, I believe in it with all of my heart. But as we know, all rights granted to us under the Constitution have limitations,” Henderson said during his closing arguments.
People “can’t maliciously holler ‘fire’ in a theater,” he said.
This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 4:15 PM.
