Georgia family sues grocery clerk for posting about their alleged involvement in Jan 6. insurrection

Zeedox

Resident Canadian
Dec 1, 2020
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From her Washington hotel on Jan. 6, Katheryn Cagle asked for prayers and assured friends and family via Facebook that she and her mother were safe. “Yes, Mama and I are in Washington, D.C.,” Cagle allegedly posted the day a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Cagle’s followers reacted with thumbs-up and heart emoji. But not everyone was feeling the love.
“I thought Kate Cagle [was] on the planning committee, I hope she doesn’t plan to make a career out of planning riots,” Rayven Goolsby later wrote on Facebook. In a separate post, she addressed Cagle’s mother, Thelma Cagle. “Didn’t you attend the insurrection? I am pretty sure you did.”

In late February, the exchange jumped from social media to a superior court in Pickens County, Ga., when the Cagles sued Goolsby for defamation and libel. Goolsby’s attorney, Andrew Fleischman, characterized the Cagles’ suit as an example of a prominent family active in local politics using the heft of the courts to intimidate his client, who works at a local grocery store, into silence.

On Friday, Goolsby filed a suit under a Georgia law that grants protection from what’s known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP suits.

The anti-SLAPP suit notes that Katheryn Cagle deleted all of her social media history pertaining to Jan. 6. If the matter goes into discovery, both sides could be compelled to produce troves of personal data, such as GPS location history and message logs — “all kinds of stuff even a police officer would have trouble getting,” Fleischman said.
 
Somebody is suing somebody for something they said on facebook? Are you fucking kidding me?