NEW HOLLAND, Ohio — In a scathing rebuke and in support of the First Amendment, the 12th District Court of Appeals has tossed a former elected official’s lawsuit against his own police department and several village residents.
Former New Holland Mayor Clair Betzko, who is better known as Butch to locals sued a former police sergeant of his own village and two local citizens after the mayor said they conspired to throw him out of office.
It all stemmed around a summer 2018 search warrant that then-Sergeant Brad Mick executed on his own police department in the small village of 800 alleging corruption by the town’s administration. The debacle ended in Betzko, former police chief Jason Lawless, and former police captain David Conrad being charged with felonies and misdemeanors over falsifying paperwork. In the end, the county prosecutor, Judy Wolford, never presented the charges to a grand jury and the time lapsed for a trial, with the cases being dismissed.
Fast forward to later that year, when Betzko filed a lawsuit in Fayette County against Mick and village residents Teresa Bayer and Karen Francis, saying they were a group of masterminds behind making him look bad. The mayor argued in his filing that the three conspired to defame him in the search warrant and worked together to throw him out of office; he sought more than $350,000 in damages.
Betzko said in the filing that Mick setup the search warrant to run the mayor out of office, while Francis and Bayer had voiced concerns about the handling of government affairs, which shined a bad light on him. The two frequently posted to social media and were administrators of a Facebook group page which was often critical on a variety of issues including public officials and the local government. Bayer also erected signs in her yard that stated, “STOP THE CORRUPTION” and “MAKE NH GREAT AGAIN DRAIN THE SWAMP STOP THE CORRUPTION.” A Court ruling says the two became concerned that certain public officials and law enforcement officers had been stalking and harassing them due to their public commentaries, so they made complaints and sent letters to various agencies, including then- Attorney General Mike DeWine. The letter provided a list of general concerns in a variety of areas, such as the possibility of abuse of power, speed traps, nepotism, inflated charges on water and sewer, intimidation, and harassment.
In a bizarre happenstance, the village’s insurance company ended up hiring legal counsel to defend Mick at taxpayers’ expense in the mayor’s lawsuit — which means the mayor was effectively suing his own town. Bayer and Francis were left to hire their own legal counsel.
Fayette County Court of Common Pleas Judge Steven P. Beathard ruled that Betzko’s case was essentially a waste of time and tossed the lawsuit. Beathard said Mick had probable cause for the search warrant and that the women were exercising free speech. Unhappy with the ruling, the former mayor appealed, without much luck.
On Monday, the area’s appellant court told Betzko to pound sand in a champion for First Amendment Rights. In the latest ruling, one of the judges said the former mayor should stay out of politics if he did not have tough skin.
“This case serves as an important reminder of why the guarantees of the right to free speech found in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 11 of the Ohio Constitution are so important,” wrote Justice Matthew Byrne. “I do not doubt that Betzko was angered, distressed, and embarrassed by many of the negative comments made about him by the defendants. But Betzko, like the judges of this court, was elected. When a citizen decides to run for public office, he or she is choosing to serve the public, which necessarily involves being open to public criticism …. a democratic republic cannot operate as it should, and the fundamental rights of individuals cannot be protected, if harsh criticisms of public officials are subject to policing by the courts each time a public official disagrees with that criticism. The same is true in a small village like New Holland, where Betzko was mayor.”
None of the lawyers for the parties involved could be reached for comment.
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