Campbell Partners Client Awarded $1.5 Million Summary Judgment in Defamation Case Against Donald Watkins
On the afternoon of Friday, august 20, 2021, Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court Judge Allen w. May, in the case Matrix, LLC et al v. Donald V Watkins et al, entered final judgment in favor of plaintiffs, Joseph Perkins and Matrix, LLC, and against defendants, Donald V. Watkins and Donald V. Watkins, P.C. in the amount of $1.5 million.
Perkins, a longtime Alabama-based political consultant, filed suit against Watkins in response to opinions the defendant posted in 2017 — first to Facebook and later to a website — in response to news stories about the alleged sexual assault of a female university of Alabama student who later committed suicide. Watkins’ posts included allegations about a conspiracy to silence the AU student. Most allegations relied on what Watkins described as “anonymous sources.”
Among these allegations, Watkins claimed that Matrix and Perkins had undertaken various unethical, and even criminal, actions to silence the family of the now-deceased student and sully her reputation.
Perkins’s attorney, Cason Kirby notes: “Watkins never identified his ‘anonymous source,’ nor provided any verifiable evidence that the ‘source’ even existed. We demanded Watkins retract his false statements, but he refused, so we sued him for five claims of defamation.”
After hiding from service for several weeks, Watkins filed a counterclaim alleging that Matrix and Perkins had disparaged him by calling him “a financially broken, desperate man suffering from psychological and behavioral problems.”
After significant discovery, including testimony from Watkins himself, as well as a former publisher of the Tuscaloosa news, Kirby and co-counsel Todd Campbell moved for summary judgment on all claims and counterclaims, which Watkins opposed.
Court findings:
Matrix and Perkins established that Watkins’s statements were false, and Watkins was unable to provide any evidence of the truth of his allegations.
Matrix and Perkins established, through uncontested admissible evidence, that Watkins was liable for defamation per se — and was negligent in his failure to even attempt to verify his allegations.
Watkins failed to prove that Perkins made the alleged statement about Watkins; therefore, the Court did not reach a determination on the truth of the statement.
Watkins — who is currently serving a 27-month prison sentence for seven counts of wire fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy — still has the right to appeal the judgment against him.