McDonald may be abandoning defamation suit against Sayre

The Warren County Courthouse may have one less civil case pending on its September docket if Judge Bruce Albertson grants counsel’s request the Jennifer McDonald defamation case against Tom Sayre be removed. Royal Examiner File Photo/Royal Examiner

In the wake of a letter requesting pending September hearing dates in Jennifer McDonald’s $600,000 civil defamation lawsuit against Tom Sayre be removed from the Warren County Circuit Court docket it appears that legal action is heading toward non-suit status.

The docket-removal letter to Judge Bruce D. Albertson is signed by the former EDA executive director’s attorney Lee Berlik and Sayre attorney Margaret Ward. The Harrisonburg-based Albertson, appointed when no local judge was available to hear EDA-related cases due to recusal, pending recusal and/or promotion to higher court, has yet to rule on the docket removal request. But it would seem unlikely the jointly signed request would be denied.

Shenandoah District Supervisor Sayre’s attorney Peggy Ward verified she believed the plaintiff move to drop the suit related to her request to depose McDonald in order to help prepare her defense case. Berlik did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

The plaintiff-initiated request to remove the case from the court docket comes on the heels of two defense filings in the lawsuit, the above-cited request to depose McDonald regarding the case, and the defense’s consequent request McDonald’s lawsuit be stayed pending resolution of her criminal cases.

That defense request for a stay was based on information in a July 15 email from McDonald’s civil case attorney that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right not to self-incriminate in response to any deposition by defense counsel.

McDonald has had 14 felony indictments filed against her related to the March 26 EDA civil suit seeking recovery of over $17 million in allegedly embezzled or misdirected EDA assets, an amount now amended to over $20 million. On December 20, 2018, McDonald resigned her EDA executive directorship under increased scrutiny of her actions in that capacity.

McDonald filed her high-dollar defamation suit against Sayre on February 19, just short of five months to the day – September 21, 2018 – after Sayre filed a slightly smaller $25,000 defamation suit against McDonald in General District Court. Completion of trial testimony in Sayre’s defamation case is scheduled for September 11, when it is anticipated both Sayre and McDonald will be called to testify.

Called by plaintiff attorneys in that trial on Friday, August 2, McDonald invoked her Fifth Amendment right regarding any questions related to EDA affairs.

Both defamation cases revolve around McDonald’s June 15, 2017 report of a landscape stone throwing vandalism at her Faith Way county home just east of the Front Royal Town limits.

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“This civil lawsuit is …indisputably intertwined with the criminal case pending against Ms. McDonald,” Ward wrote in her August 12 request the McDonald suit against her client be stayed pending resolution of McDonald’s criminal cases. “Mr. Sayre asserts that the issues of defamation arise from actions that Ms. McDonald took to deflect attention away from investigations into her actions as Executive Director of the Warren County Economic Development Authority, which now form the basis for the pending criminal charges,” Ward added.

Sayre’s civil case defense attorney verified that her client’s stance is that it is likely that McDonald created the vandalism incident reported on June 15, 2017, to deflect attention from the financial actions she is now both civilly and criminally accused of performing in her role as EDA executive director.

The odd couple at ITFederal groundbreaking during happier times – social media photo. Social Media Photo

In support of her request for a stay of McDonald’s defamation case against her client Ward wrote, “Ms. McDonald is the complainant in this case and has the burden to prove both the liability and alleged damages. She has announced, though, that she will not testify to support he claims. As a result, the Defendant is unable to obtain the facts necessary to determine whether the elements of the underlying claim of defamation have been proven and what defenses he can provide.”

And now it appears that with a signature from Judge Albertson, it will no longer be necessary for Mr. Sayre to develop that defense.

How this development may impact the conclusion of Sayre’s defamation case against McDonald on September 11 remains to be seen.

Sayre attorney in that case, Tim Bosson, estimated his client would testify for a half hour to 45 minutes under direct examination, with a similar timeframe anticipated for cross examination by McDonald attorney Lee Berlik.

And while McDonald invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to five of eight questions asked by Sayre’s counsel on August 2, one would anticipate that if called by her own attorney on September 11, it would not be to plead her Fifth Amendment right.

Sayre – McDonald defamation suit continued to September 11