Hurricane Florence may be on her way towards our area, but Hurricane Justice already made landfall in Cornelius earlier this week and the Miltich residence was directly in its path. In case you weren’t aware, Mr. Michael F. Miltich, an elected member of the Cornelius Town Board, FREAKING SUED one of his constituents, Ms. Michelle Ferlauto, in July because he was super mad about some words she typed on the internets and because he hates America and Freedom and getting called out for being a liar liar with his pants on fire for lying about comments he was recorded making about Cornelius firefighters. I’ll link the actual lawsuit at the bottom of the page in case you want to show your kids what a frivolous suit looks like.
[IMPORTANT NOTE: PLEASE DON’T SUE ME TOO MR. MILTICH, THIS IS ALL JUST MY OPINION AND IS TOTALLY PROTECTED POLITICAL SPEECH CONCERNING A PUBLIC FIGURE (See U.S. CONST. am. 1.) BECAUSE IT’S STILL NOT ILLEGAL TO MAKE FUN OF POLITICIANS IN AMERICA.]
Thankfully for Ms. Ferlauto, the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice this week [see Dismissal below, along with copies of Ms. Ferlauto’s Answer, Motion to Dismiss, and Motion for Sanctions] due to the stellar legal work of local attorneys Jim Dedman of Gallivan, White & Boyd and Eric Spengler of Spengler & Agans. If you, too, have been sued by a butthurt elected official in your town for exercising your free political speech, or if you need assistance with any other legal issues, I would highly encourage you contact either of these fine members of the bar. If they hadn’t agreed to defend Ms. Ferlauto pro bono, the costs for her to defend this garbage lawsuit could have potentially been devastating. And the cowardly Mr. Miltich knew this, which is why he purposefully chose to sue only Ms. Ferlauto despite multiple other individuals and media outlets discussing/reporting his recorded comments about Cornelius firefighters, because he mistakenly thought she was an easy target and he could use a suit against her to score political points. I wouldn’t recommend you hold your breath waiting for Mr. Miltich to file a similar bogus lawsuit against any local media outlets or any other individuals.
To be clear, dismissed with prejudice means there was NO SETTLEMENT by Ms. Ferlauto. She didn’t have to delete any social media postings and she didn’t have to sign any non-disclosure agreement as demanded by Mr. Miltich. Seriously, he tried to get her to sign an NDA before he’d agree to drop his COMPLETELY FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT. Instead, she simply stood her ground against a bully and punched him in the nose – figuratively speaking, of course – and he went crying back to his mommy JUST SIX DAYS after her attorneys filed a Motion to Dismiss and a Motion for Sanctions in their answer to the lawsuit. Unfortunately, two attorneys had to waste their valuable time in dealing with this frivolity and Ms. Ferlauto has had to deal with the stress of being sued ever since July – not an easy thing to deal with for most non-attorneys.
Why so many other local elected officials and local politicos are still being seen in photos on social media with Mr. Miltich even AFTER he attempted to silence the political speech of a constituent is beyond me.
The good folks in Cornelius deserve better. If Mr. Miltich was in possession of any decency he would resign immediately.
Eric