Plaintiff prevails in local revenge pornography case

By Thomas Franz
BridgeTower Media Newswires
 
DETROIT — A defendant in a revenge pornography case has been ordered to pay $100,000 to his ex-girlfriend despite not publishing any pornographic content online.

Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Shalina Kumar ordered defendant Schuyler Bates to pay his ex-girlfriend for falsely telling her that he had secretly recorded sexual videos of them and posted them online.

“This case was different because the content was not even posted on the internet. We only had these text messages, but the texts ended up being actionable by themselves,” said plaintiff’s attorney Kyle J. Bristow of Bristow Law PLLC in Clinton Township.

Background

The defendant texted the plaintiff on April 1, 2018, and told her that he had recorded the two of them having sex while they were dating, according to Bristow. The defendant claimed that he posted them on a pornography website without her knowledge or consent.

The defendant further claimed in the text messages that the videos had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, including by the defendant’s co-workers.

Following the text messages, the plaintiff had a personal protection order against the defendant, and she moved to another state.

“At one point in time, my client was bed-ridden, she had crying spells, and she went to therapy,” Bristow said. “When you look at the sum total of everything, the mental anguish to which she was subjected was very severe.”

Turning point

When the case started, Bristow and his client originally thought the defendant created the content and posted it on the internet.

“We construed his text messages as party admissions concerning the same,” Bristow said.

However, Bristow said as the case progressed, a reverse image search didn’t turn up anything that showed the plaintiff online.

“I’m very good at finding content on the internet through reverse Google image searches, and we couldn’t find anything on the internet,” Bristow said.

That forced a change in strategy.

“Our theory was that he never posted the content and the video was not even of my client. The video in the text message was that of just a random woman. There were no tattoos visible in certain areas that should’ve had tattoos,” Bristow said. “When it boils down to it, the defendant sent my client the text messages. He willfully intended her to believe she was victimized in this invasive manner, and he succeeded in that goal.”

During the plaintiff’s deposition, Bristow said the defense counsel said on the record that the defendant sent the text messages to the plaintiff and that he was sorry for it.

“I filed a motion in limine to ask that the judge construed that as judicial admissions. The judge during the case did find that because the attorney made those representations of fact on the record, that they could be used against the opposing party,” Bristow said.

Opposing counsel Errick A. Miles of Smith Bovill PC in Saginaw said it was a strategic decision to admit to sending the text messages.

“Instead of taking the position that he did not send them, which would’ve looked bad in front of the jury, we decided to fall on that sword and say he did send them, he’s very sorry for it, but there’s no severe emotional distress here,” Miles said. “That was a strategy decision we made prior to the deposition date.”

Defendant’s absence

Throughout the case, the defendant became unresponsive to any of Miles’ attempts to communicate with him.

Just a week before trial, Miles said he continued to not hear from his client, so he filed a motion to withdraw himself as counsel. Judge Kumar granted that motion and later entered a default judgement of $100,000.

After that judgment was entered, Miles received a call from the defendant’s mother, who found out that the defendant had been in jail in northern Michigan.

“I discussed options with her,” Miles said. “She had his criminal defense lawyer contact me and we worked out an arrangement where I would file some post-judgment motions to try to get some relief from the trial court.”

Those motions were rejected, Miles said, since Kumar found that the defendant still could’ve reached out to Miles during that time. Miles said he hasn’t heard from Bates since those rulings.

Defense strategy

Miles said the case was unusual because there’s not much Michigan case law for this type of claim, but he worked to narrow the scope of his defense to the elements of infliction of emotional distress.

“There was a two-prong approach. The first prong was to argue that my client’s activities weren’t extreme and outrageous as required,” Miles said. “That is kind of a judgment call and a question of fact.”

Miles said he thought his side could win summary disposition by arguing the plaintiff did not suffer severe emotional distress based on medical and therapy records.

“It didn’t appear as though she suffered much distress at all. We figured we had a pretty good shot at summary disposition on that,” Miles said.

Miles said Kumar denied that motion based on the testimony of the plaintiff’s parents.

“The judge found there was a question of fact whether or not she did suffer severe emotional distress because her parents had testified they had observed her crying more than she had, and so I think the judge hung her hat on that fact rather than some of her records we put forward,” Miles said.

In examining the plaintiff’s records, Miles argued that the incident didn’t cause her mental health to become any worse than before.

“If you look at the records, this is just a minor blip in her records and it looks like the therapy was helping both before and after and her mental state improved following this. We argued that this was going to be our trial strategy as well by saying Bates had done some things he shouldn’t have, but under the law, you should find that he is not liable because she did not suffer severe emotional distress,” Miles said.