Embedded revenue $873 million, +6.1% y/y, estimate $868.4 million
“Looking ahead, we expect server growth to accelerate meaningfully as we scale supply to meet demand,” Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said in the statement.
“We delivered an outstanding first quarter, driven by accelerating demand for AI infrastructure, with data center now the primary driver of our revenue and earnings growth.”
Oh and in case you didn’t see enough beats…
Capital expenditure $389 million, +83% y/y, estimate $215.2 million
Adjusted operating income $2.54 billion, +43% y/y, estimate $2.41 billion
Adjusted operating margin 25% vs. 24% y/y, estimate 24.3%
Free cash flow $2.57 billion vs. $727 million y/y, estimate $2.35 billion
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) is trotting out a familiar, false line of attack against Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos, who co-sponsored the Met Gala this year.
“If Jeff Bezos can drop $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala, he can afford to pay his fair share in taxes,” she wrote on X.
What would it mean for Bezos to pay his fair share? Is his fair share more than $2.7 billion? Because that’s how much he likely paid in taxes in 2024, according toForbes.
Bezos’ wealth largely consists of the stock he owns in Amazon. When he cashes in shares of stock, he pays taxes. That’s how it works for everyone. It doesn’t make sense to tax people based on the theoretical value of the stock they own; that would mean taxing unrealized gains, i.e., the projected value of the asset before it’s sold. Even Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), a progressive and supporter of heavier taxation on billionaires, at one point understood that such a tax would discourage entrepreneurs from investing in their own companies and instead force them to sell off assets to private equity firms.
And what if the value of the company falls? Should the government pay back the money under such a scheme, or would an unrealized gains tax work in just one direction? This is obviously unworkable.
Moreover, the broader leftist notion—one made popular by Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.)—that the rich are paying less in taxes than everyone else is simply false. The U.S. tax code is extremely progressive: Lower-income people shoulder a significantly smaller tax burden than richer Americans. For federal income tax, the vast majority of revenue—upwards of 97 percent—is raised off the top half of income earners.
It’s possible to further raise taxes on rich Americans, of course. New York City and California have proposed to do just that. They may find out, however, that the wealthy can only put up with so much pain before they flee to red states. That’s because the federal government is already confiscating an obscene amount of money from them.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) is trotting out a familiar, false line of attack against Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos, who co-sponsored the Met Gala this year.
“If Jeff Bezos can drop $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala, he can afford to pay his fair share in taxes,” she wrote on X.
What would it mean for Bezos to pay his fair share? Is his fair share more than $2.7 billion? Because that’s how much he likely paid in taxes in 2024, according toForbes.
Bezos’ wealth largely consists of the stock he owns in Amazon. When he cashes in shares of stock, he pays taxes. That’s how it works for everyone. It doesn’t make sense to tax people based on the theoretical value of the stock they own; that would mean taxing unrealized gains, i.e., the projected value of the asset before it’s sold. Even Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), a progressive and supporter of heavier taxation on billionaires, at one point understood that such a tax would discourage entrepreneurs from investing in their own companies and instead force them to sell off assets to private equity firms.
And what if the value of the company falls? Should the government pay back the money under such a scheme, or would an unrealized gains tax work in just one direction? This is obviously unworkable.
Moreover, the broader leftist notion—one made popular by Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.)—that the rich are paying less in taxes than everyone else is simply false. The U.S. tax code is extremely progressive: Lower-income people shoulder a significantly smaller tax burden than richer Americans. For federal income tax, the vast majority of revenue—upwards of 97 percent—is raised off the top half of income earners.
It’s possible to further raise taxes on rich Americans, of course. New York City and California have proposed to do just that. They may find out, however, that the wealthy can only put up with so much pain before they flee to red states. That’s because the federal government is already confiscating an obscene amount of money from them.
Since the COVID pandemic landed on American shores in early 2020, virologists and allied science writers have engaged in a vociferous propaganda campaign to deny the dangers of virus experiments. When Nature Magazine published a 2021 article minimizing a Wuhan lab accident as the pandemic’s cause, science writer Amy Maxmen quoted Vincent Munster, a virologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Montana.
Munster told Nature’s Maxmen that there was nothing suspicious about a novel coronavirus popping up in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology which was studying coronaviruses. Labs tend to specialize in the specific viruses found around them, Munster explained, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology focuses on coronaviruses because many circulate in China and neighboring countries.
“Nine out of ten times, when there’s a new outbreak, you’ll find a lab that will be working on these kinds of viruses nearby,” Munster told Nature.
Well, kind of. Sort of. But really not.
In fact, virologists regularly collect viruses from far away countries and bring them back to their own cities to study. And according to emails I have seen that are now circulating inside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), one of those virologists is the NIH’s Vincent Munster.
“We are unable to comment as this is under investigation,” wrote HHS spokesperson, Andrew Nixon in an email. “So we will refer you to the FBI.”
When contacted about their investigation into Munster and his NIH researcher, the FBI press office replied by email, “We decline to comment.”
While on a trip back from the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year, Munster and a scientist in his NIH lab were pulled aside for an airport security inspection. Inside their luggage, one of the two had a hard-shelled protective case used to transport sensitive property such as electronics and firearms. When the protective case was opened, it was found to contain pathogen samples collected from patients.
However, the human pathogens, which included monkeypox virus, may have been inactivated by reagents and rendered no longer infectious.
Munster and his NIH research fellow Claude Kwe Yinda published a February study in a Lancet journal that cited monkeypox as a global threat. Without any hint of irony, they warned about “multiple travel-associated cases reported since 2024, including seven in the USA.” The Democratic Republic of Congo has been considered the global epicenter of monkeypox virus, with over 100,000 cases as of October last year.
Munster and his lab scientist did not have paperwork required by law to transport deadly pathogens from Africa to his NIH lab in Montana. Both NIH scientists were placed on leave. Contact information for both Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe Yinda have been removed from the HHS employment directory.
Last year, the Department of Justice charged two Chinese nationals with criminal conspiracy for smuggling a dangerous plant fungus through a Detroit airport so they could study it in a lab at the University of Michigan.
Munster did not return repeated requests for comment sent to his NIH email asking him to explain if the monkeypox and potentially other viruses he was transporting had been inactivated or were still infectious. According to his bio at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Labs in Montana, Munster has field study sites in the Republic of the Congo to study Ebola virus with collaborators at the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Laboratoire National de Santé Publique in Brazzaville.
Rocky Mountain Labs is an integral part of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the institute once led by Tony Fauci. The Montana facility has a BSL-4 lab where virologists study the world’s most deadly viruses including Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa Fever.
Andrea Marzi, the Acting Chief of Virology at Rocky Mountain Labs, did not return emails asking if the monkeypox and other possible viruses Munster was transporting had been inactivated or were still infectious. Nor did she reply to requests asking if Munster’s lab had been secured.
Senator Rand Paul sent the NIAID director a letter two years ago regarding Munster, who was listed as a partner for a project called DEFUSE that was submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). As part of DEFUSE proposal to DARPA, virologists planned to engineer novel viruses by taking the backbone of a bat virus and inserting a spike protein with a furin cleavage site. A furin cleavage site allows viruses to infect the cells of human lungs.
DARPA denied funding for DEFUSE, but the following year, a novel bat virus with a furin cleavage site began infecting humans in Wuhan. No other virus closely related to the COVID virus has this furin cleavage site.
Shortly after the COVID virus began infecting Americans, Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello sent Munster an alarming February 2020 email, saying he had heard that the new COVID virus had a furin cleavage site “that might have been engineered.”
“If true this is very bad for all of virology research,” Racaniell wrote to Munster.
“And the fun begins,” replied Munster.
The news about Munster hits during an especially hard media cycle for virologists. I reported last week for RealClearInvestigations that the federal government had quietly removed University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric from all his NIH grants; UNC also placed Baric on leave. A senior HHS official, who reviewed the government’s classified material, told me that UNC is terrified the public will learn that they were complicit in starting the COVID pandemic.
“Baric designed the gun,” he said. “But the Chinese built it, and then they pulled the trigger.”
That same day, the Department of Justice indicted Tony Fauci’s senior advisor, David Morens, for concealing federal records concerning funding for virus research during the COVID pandemic. The indictment listed Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance as “CO-CONSPIRATOR 1” and Boston University virologist Gerald Keusch as “CO-CONSPIRATOR 2.”
Last month, I reported on newly unearthed emails that show Morens, Daszak, and Keusch plotted against me for writing a 2021 investigation for the BMJ that concluded virologists had conspired in a misinformation campaign to cover up a possible Wuhan lab accident as the COVID pandemic’s cause.
In emails discussing me and my 2021 article, Keusch asked Morens and Daszak if they knew how to get in contact with former BMJ editor Peter Smith to complain. Daszak emailed back that contacting the BMJ about me was “a really good move” as my reporting was “pretty offensive stuff.”
One of the beneficiaries of Virginia’s aggressive attempt to gerrymander the state for Democratic advantage could be a former federal prosecutor whose campaign for Congress hinges on his efforts to use the law to target President Trump and his supporters.
When a slim majority of Virginia voters gave the legislature authority last month to create congressional districts that could give Democrats a 10-1 advantage, J.P. Cooney cheered the outcome in a message on social media, boasting that the new district he was running in had been drawn “expressly for the purpose of standing up to Donald Trump’s and MAGA’s corruption.”
Although the fate of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District remains unclear – a state judge immediately blocked the measure, and the issue is expected to end up before the Supreme Court – Cooney’s candidacy represents a small but growing wave of former prosecutors who are running on their anti-Trump bona fides. So far, at least two other former Justice Department officials are seeking office by touting their work against the president, his supporters, and his current administration. All are running as Democrats.
To their supporters, these candidates represent a principled stand against what they see as the lawless excesses of the Trump administration. To many Republicans, the entry of supposedly neutral federal prosecutors into the brass knuckle world of politics confirms their suspicions that the DOJ is filled with partisans who used their power to target the president and the MAGA movement in general.
Ryan Crosswell, who is running for Congress as a Democrat in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, resigned from his position as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York last year, after the Justice Department sought to drop the indictment against then New York City Mayor Eric Adams on corruption charges. Crosswell’s superiors decided the case should be dropped over evidence suggesting the Biden DOJ had targeted the mayor because he was a vocal critic of the administration’s immigration policies.
In what has become a popular tactic by anti-Trump DOJ lawyers, Crosswell issued a public resignation letter: “I cannot fathom how anyone would do this to the public servants he is supposed to be leading. And the damage done was not limited to two offices – it appalled prosecutors throughout the Department and our alumni.”
In his video announcement, Crosswell showed a clip of Trump walking into a courthouse (followed by now acting Attorney General Todd Blanche) and denounced the president for forcing prosecutors to “drop a case against one of his friends.” (It is unclear whether Adams is actually a “friend” of Trump’s.)
In Minneapolis, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Le is using her opposition to Trump’s immigration policies in her bid to replace another fierce Trump critic, Rep. Ilhan Omar, in the Democratic primary. Le gained national attention in February when she had a meltdown before the judge. “What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” Le said, referring to the DOJ’s overwhelming caseload. Le also told the judge, “We have no guidance or direction on what we need to do.”
Impeccable Anti-Trump Credentials
Le was quickly fired. She told the Washington Post that “she had never voted for Trump and opposed his brash enforcement style.” While Croswell and Le are hoping their anti-Trump credentials will help usher them into office, their record of resistance pales in comparison to Cooney’s, whose record of anti-Trump activity goes back a decade.
Cooney – a Notre Dame grad where he served as the president of the College Democrats club before earning a law degree at the University of Virginia – launched his campaign in a crowded field by boasting about his key role in several anti-Trump prosecutions pursued by Attorney General Merrick Garland and Special Counsel Jack Smith between 2021 and 2025. After Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel in November 2022, Cooney became his top deputy in the DOJ’s Jan. 6, 2021-related indictment against the president in Washington. They pushed for a quick trial before Election Day. Cooney also successfully sought a gag order against the president one year before the 2024 presidential election, banning the president from making any public statements about potential witnesses in the case, which included former administration officials such as Vice President Mike Pence and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who were at the time criticizing Trump’s plan to again run for office.
Cooney, then chief of the fraud and public corruption section of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, drafted the initial plan for how the DOJ could pursue Trump, as well as several figures and organizations who had participated in the events of Jan. 6. But Cooney’s plan was so aggressive, according to a 2023 Washington Post article, that it alarmed top FBI and DOJ officials and was immediately scuttled.
Trump fired Cooney shortly after Inauguration Day.
The J6 case against the president was dropped after Trump won the 2024 election, but Cooney wants to finish the job. “We have the evidence to convict this president,” Cooney said, pointing to the White House, in one social media post. “That justice can still come.” Cooney also insists that if Trump hadn’t “escaped trials by winning the election,” the president right now “would be in prison.”
“Cooney was the mastermind of the J6 case against the president,” John Lauro, the president’s trial counsel in the J6 case in Washington, told RealClearInvestigations. “Smith and Cooney used the sacred powers of the DOJ against Trump and political movement. Now we see the ultimate fruition of that with Cooney running for office as a far left Democrat and to use his experience as a persecutor against Trump to get an advantage in the far left wing of the Democratic party.”
Jack Smith Endorsement
Jack Smith is endorsing his longtime colleague – the pair worked together at the Obama DOJ’s public integrity unit – calling Cooney “a man of integrity who has committed his career to upholding the rule of law, and he’s the model of who our country needs in public service.”
The president and congressional Republicans disagree. Cooney is currently the subject of both House and Senate investigations for allegedly abusing his authority at the DOJ to pursue Trump and his allies. During an April 21 hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley accused Cooney and other former Biden DOJ officials of “literally trying to destroy” the country; Grassley, an Iowa Republican, released an extensive trove of text messages and emails between Cooney and Molly Gaston, his co-counsel in the J6 case against Trump.
Immediately following the events of Jan. 6, Cooney worked with Gaston to also investigate a handful of Republican House members for allegedly conducting “reconnaissance tours” on Jan. 5. That accusation was made by then Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherill, now the governor of New Jersey. Sherill claimed groups of individuals, some perhaps tied to Republican lawmakers, were walking inside the Capitol the day before the protest in an effort to scope out the building.
In a Jan. 16, 2021, text to Gaston, Cooney said he believed the “tour/map thing has legs.” He stated that Sherill’s allegations “made perfect sense” to him. “I am fairly confident that we are going to put a map or some other information relevant to coordinated activity in the hands of an extremist group and trace it back to a congressional office.”
Gaston replied, “yep.” A week later, the FBI Washington field office opened “Operation Rampart Twelve” to investigate Sherill’s accusations; the inquiry initially focused on Reps. Lauren Boebert and Paul Gosar based on groups of individuals walking near each representative on Jan. 5, 2021. (Sherril also made a similar allegation against Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who was cleared by Capitol Police after a separate investigation.)
FBI headquarters closed “Operation Rampart Twelve” a year later, after finding no evidence to support Cooney’s claims.
Cooney’s anti-Trump fingerprints stretch from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to “Arctic Frost,” the Biden DOJ’s investigation into Trump and hundreds of Republican organizations, donors, and officeholders for the so-called “fake electors” plan. Emails released last year by Grassley’s committee showed Cooney’s central role in obtaining the toll records of several Republican members of Congress related to the probe.
“It’s impossible to buy Democrats’ claim that Arctic Frost was a nonpartisan, by-the-book investigation when Jack Smith’s top henchman is now openly campaigning as a Democrat and running on a platform of impeaching President Trump,” a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee told RCI. “Cooney’s campaign is saying the quiet part out loud. Arctic Frost was never about justice – it was always about using the federal justice system to take down President Trump and the Republican Party. Thanks to Chairman Grassley’s oversight, which has exposed the Biden administration’s internal records, Americans are seeing the dark reality of the weaponized Arctic Frost investigation.”
But three ongoing federal criminal investigations into the president, a year before the 2024 election, were not enough for Cooney. A few months before Smith handed down his first indictment against the president in Florida for allegedly taking classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, Cooney wanted to open yet another line of inquiry into Trump’s involvement in a song produced by the so-called “J6 Prison Choir,” a group of inmates detained at a special prison in Washington. Cooney wanted to know whether Trump was profiting from sales of the song. “Can we do some work on this to nail down Trump’s role in this?” Cooney wrote to his colleagues at the special counsel’s office in March 2023, referring to a Forbes article about the project.
“The special counsel’s team was filled with inbred ideologues,” Lauro said
Excessive Sentences, False Rumors
After longtime Trump confidant Steve Bannon was found guilty by a D.C. jury in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress, Cooney sought excessive prison time for Bannon’s refusal to cooperate with the Select January 6 Committee. He filed a 24-page sentencing memo for two misdemeanors that are rarely, if ever, prosecuted in the nation’s capital; he asked Judge Carl Nichols to send Bannon to prison for six months and pay a $200,000 fine. “The rioters who overran the Capitol on January 6 did not just attack a building – they assaulted the rule of law upon which this country was built and through which it endures. By flouting the Select Committee’s subpoena and its authority, [Bannon] exacerbated that assault,” Cooney wrote.
Nichols sentenced Bannon to four months in prison and imposed a $6,500 fine.
It was another sentencing request in a separate Trump-related case that offended both the DOJ’s inspector general and House Republicans. Cooney was part of the government’s team prosecuting Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate, for allegedly interfering in the bogus Russia collusion investigation. Just like Bannon, Stone was found guilty by a D.C. jury of all charges, including obstruction and making false statements.
Cooney attempted to throw the book at Stone, asking for a sentence of between seven and nine years in prison. But the following day, Cooney’s boss at the office, who had already sparred with Cooney over what he saw as an excessive sentencing request, filed a separate sentencing recommendation, informing Judge Amy Berman Jackson that the initial memo “does not accurately reflect the Department of Justice’s position on what would be a reasonable sentence in this matter.”
That prompted Cooney, according to then-DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, to start rumors claiming President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr had intervened to help Stone obtain a lower sentence. A report issued in 2024 by Horowitz, following an extensive investigation into the Stone sentencing controversy, “did not identify documentary or testimonial evidence that the actions and decisions of those involved in the preparation and filing of the first and second sentencing memoranda were affected by improper political considerations or influence.” House Judiciary Chairman James Jordan subsequently opened a congressional investigation into Cooney’s false claims of political interference in the matter.
Attempts to reach Cooney’s and Crosswell’s campaigns were unsuccessful. Despite repeated requests, a DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment on their candidacies.
Cooney’s years-long pursuit of the president and everyone around him, Lauro insists, helped Trump get elected in 2024. “Because of [Cooney’s] efforts, President Trump won the presidency. So he was terrific for the president and the MAGA movement in that regard.”
Still, Cooney’s anti-Trump legacy may not be finished yet. If Cooney wins his Virginia race and Democrats retake the House in the fall midterm elections, the former prosecutor could play a central role amid reports that his party is already planning to impeach Trump.
The Nuclear Co. And Brookfield Partner For New Large Reactor Projects
Brookfield announced that it has formed a partnership with The Nuclear Company (TNC), to create a new company for developing Westinghouse reactor technology.
This new company, which remains unnamed, is being positioned as a world-leading nuclear project execution company.
A few weeks ago, we covered how Bloomberg anticipated an announcement for new AP1000s. But it appears TNC is focusing the JV’s efforts, in the near term, on the possible restart and completion of the two AP1000 reactors at VC Summer in South Carolina.
Westinghouse originally attempted to construct the two large reactors in 2017, but eventually canceled the project after costs spiraled out of control. Brookfield is now performing the studies necessary to make a Final Investment Decision by 2027, which would mean purchasing the partially-completed assets from Santee Cooper for $2.7 billion.
The new company will also offer execution capabilities for deploying Westinghouse’s smaller AP300 design with “end-to-end project management, licensing support, and oversight of engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning activity.”
TNC’s Chief Nuclear Officer, Joe Klecha, frames the announcement as finally addressing what the nuclear industry has been lacking in order to truly unleash the nuclear renaissance build out phase, “We know what it takes to deliver nuclear. What’s been missing is a model that brings together the people, the capabilities, and the capital to do it at speed and scale. That’s what this partnership creates.”
The timelines are still relatively disappointing. Every month China seems to be adding another reactor to their “under construction” stack, with India gaining speed as well. As the months go on, it becomes harder and harder to take the nuclear renaissance seriously in the United States, given the lack of nuclear energy being added to the grid.
It’s also bewildering that Brookfield and Cameco are still leaving money on the table with the previously announced$80 billion worth of support from the US government.
These massive amounts of money remain untouched since they were announced in October of last year.
The progress being made under programs like the DOE Reactor Pilot Program are promising. But the program’s wins, with being close to taking kilowatt-scale reactors critical for the first time in decades, struggle to stand out when China is adding over 1,000 megawatts of energy to their grid every month or two.
OPEC’s second-largest producer, Iraq, is offering huge discounts of up to $33.40 per barrel off the official selling prices for its crude that has to move through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iraq’s oil production and exports have been severely crippled due to the hostilities in the Middle East and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the only way to move Iraqi Basrah crude grades.
Iraq was one of the first Gulf producers to slash upstream production and now exports a small part of its crude via a pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. But its key export port at Basrah, which handled the bulk of exports prior to the war, is constrained due to the unpassable Strait of Hormuz. Iraq has shipped some cargoes eastward out of the Strait thanks to bilateral agreements with Iran’s forces, but tankers now have to move empty westward of the Strait and travel deep into the Persian Gulf to load from Basrah.
The inbound movement at the Strait of Hormuz is at a standstill, and renewed tensions, blockades, the U.S. Project Freedom to guide ships, the Iranian threats to said project, and Iranian expansion of the area of control at Hormuz are further complicating tanker movement west into the Persian Gulf.
Iraq is now offering a discount of $33.40 per barrel off the official selling price of its flagship Basrah Medium crude loading from Basrah on the Gulf in May, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a May 3 notice by Iraqi state oil marketing company SOMO.
Basrah Medium that would be loaded between May 1 and 10 would be priced at a discount of $33.40 a barrel below the OSP, and at a $26-per-barrel discount between May 11 and 31, according to the notice seen by Bloomberg.
Basrah Heavy for loading in May is being offered to buyers at $30 below the OSP.
If a buyer agrees to some of the offers, SOMO’s notice says that “force majeure shall not be applicable to this offer, given that it has been issued under existing exceptional conditions already known to all parties.”
From a long opinion today by Judge Waverly Crenshaw (M.D. Tenn.) in Poe v. Lowe:
Poe, a male Vanderbilt student, made social media posts about another male Vanderbilt student, Roe, and his sexual behaviors with females. [Citing court filing] showing posts by Poe’s Yik Yak account, including stating that “[Roe] is a rapist” and “[Roe] slipped me a roofie this fall, but I just wasn’t able to definitively proove [sic] it. When I brought it up to some of the [] brothers [from Roe’s fraternity] they tried to gaslight me about it” ….
Poe was not alone—a number of posts were made about Roe by other people, including other Vanderbilt students. [Citing court filing] containing Yik Yak posts by a female Vanderbilt student, L.N., including stating that she had “personal experience” with Roe and “he is a RAPIST, that is the truth and if you don’t believe it after so many girls have said it, there is nothing I can do to convince you” …. Once this came to Vanderbilt’s attention, Bourgoin, Vanderbilt’s Director of Student Accountability, Community Standards, and Academic Integrity, opened a disciplinary case against Poe, charging him with three violations of the Student Handbook …: disorderly conduct, harassment, and impersonating a University official or any other person….
Poe’s appeal was denied by Vanderbilt’s Chair of the Appellate Review Board (Lowe), and Poe was suspended for a year. Poe, who had attempted suicide after hearing of his punishment, sued Vanderbilt on various theories.
The court allowed Poe’s negligence claim to go forward based on how the disciplinary outcome was reported to him:
There is no dispute that Defendants were on notice of Poe’s serious mental health issues. [Citing record document] (Poe’s mother emailing Bourgoin and Clapper {[Vanderbilt’s] Director of Student Care Network and Student Care Coordination} that Poe “is now talking suicide We are absolutely convinced an adverse decision now will take his life“). Jamerson even testified that he had assessed Poe’s suicide risk at “moderate-to-elevated.” Defendants did not accommodate Poe’s mother’s request to move the outcome call one week. Yet, they still chose to engage in care planning with her to mitigate the risk of harm to Poe. [Citing record document] (Jamerson testifying that he “felt it was safe to move forward with adding additional precautions like having [Clapper] available to be on the [outcome] cal1, who is a licensed clinical social worker, also notifying the mom of when the date would be so that the mom was aware of when it was coming out.”).
Apparently, Defendants wanted Poe to have his mother with him during the outcome call, as evidenced by the email to his mother with the target date for the meeting. Clapper also testified that when she and Bourgoin began the outcome call with Poe, she asked Poe if his mother was there. Despite Poe telling them he lied to his mother {about the scheduling of the outcome call and [told] her that it was the following day}, Bourgoin and Clapper proceeded with the outcome call.
This is evidence from which a jury could conclude that the risk that Poe would commit suicide was sufficiently foreseeable to give rise to a duty of care. Moreover, having already decided to involve Poe’s mother, a jury could find that Defendants failed to exercise reasonable care by proceeding with the outcome call after learning that she was not there to support him.
The same analysis applies to the element of proximate causation. Defendants argue that Poe cannot establish causation, reasoning that his suicide attempt was not reasonably foreseeable in light of the precautionary steps they took to protect him. Critically, he “thwart[e]d one of the main aspects of their reasonable care plan” by lying to his mother about the date for the outcome call. But, again, Poe made Defendants aware at the outset of the outcome call that his mom was not with him. They proceeded anyway. There is a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether his suicide attempt was reasonably foreseeable, and summary judgment will be denied on the negligence claim….
The court also allowed Poe’s Title IX selective enforcement claim to go forward:
“In a selective enforcement claim, a plaintiff essentially asserts that even if he or she did violate a university policy, the decision to initiate disciplinary proceedings or the severity of the penalty imposed was motivated by gender bias.” “To prevail on his selective enforcement claim, [a plaintiff] must show that a similarly-situated member of the opposite sex was treated more favorably than the plaintiff due to his or her gender.”
The comparator in this case is a female student named L.N. Defendants argue that Poe and L.N. were not similarly situated because of the differences in timing, volume, and subject matter of their posts. Poe has come forward with sufficient admissible evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that he and L.N. were similarly situated. It is undisputed that L.N. made at least twelve posts about Roe. Her posts about Roe were very similar to Poe’s—they accuse Roe of sexual misconduct. Therefore, there is a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether Poe and L.N. were similarly situated.
The remaining elements of a selective enforcement claim are whether Poe was treated less favorably than L.N. due to gender. It is undisputed that Bourgoin knew that Poe was male and L.N. was female. There is evidence that upon learning of L.N.’s identity, including her gender, Bourgoin apparently believed the accusation that Roe raped L.N., because he wanted to report the rape to Vanderbilt’s Title IX Director …. It is also undisputed that even after learning L.N.’s posts were knowingly false, she only received probation, whereas Poe was suspended for a year. Therefore, there is evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that gender affected Vanderbilt’s decision to selectively enforce a disciplinary process against Poe….
And the court allowed much of Poe’s breach of contract claim to go forward, based on alleged violations of disciplinary process rules:
The Handbook … provides that students subject to disciplinary action may “examine all information that may form the basis for corrective action.” … Poe has come forward with admissible evidence that he did not have the opportunity to examine all information supporting the charges. For example, he testified that the charge sheet alleged he posted on “a single social media site.” It is undisputed, however, that Vanderbilt investigated him for posting on more than “a single social media site,” which was relied upon to discipline him. Likewise, Poe states that Vanderbilt never showed him the post in which he allegedly impersonated a Belmont University student….
The Handbook states that students in accountability proceedings have the opportunity “to call witnesses.” … Poe has presented admissible evidence to the contrary … [that] he was unable to call as witnesses other persons who made posts about Roe. For example, his attorneys tried to gather information from Greek Rank and Yik Yak. His attorneys advised Bourgoin that they were ultimately unable to subpoena information about other posts. There is evidence that Vanderbilt, on the other hand, knew the names of those other posters and, at a minimum, this would have been information relied upon by Vanderbilt that Poe would have been entitled to receive…. There is a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether Bourgoin denied Poe the opportunity to call witnesses by withholding witnesses’ identities from Poe….
The Handbook affords students the right to an unbiased appeal if a student is found to have engaged in misconduct. In conducting the appeal, the Chair of the Appellate Review Board (Lowe) should be provided with and review “the entire record of the case,” the student’s appeal petition, and “all supporting information provided by the [student] petitioner … in the light most favorable to the petitioner.” …
First, [Poe] argues that Lowe did not review all of the materials available to her and instead merely rubber stamped Bourgoin’s decision. Poe relies on Lowe’s testimony that her appellate review was limited to a “Box file” from a digital sharing platform. She could not confirm under oath that she did in fact review everything in the Box file.
Second, Poe argues that the appeal documents omitted information reflecting Bourgoin’s bias against him, and this “sanitized file … infected Lowe’s review.” Lowe agrees that omission of information about Bourgoin’s negative personal views of Poe would be problematic. Poe also relies on a text message from Bourgoin to Jamerson stating, in part, “FYI to offline context. We’ve had countless interactions with [Poe] from accountability, honor, and multiple title ix things He is very unwell and not stable in my untrained assessment….” This text was “offline,” meaning it was not included in Poe’s disciplinary file.
Third, Poe argues that Bourgoin improperly shifted the burden of proof to Poe to prove his innocence. Lowe agreed that would be problematic. Bourgoin admits that he held Poe’s inability to present evidence of other posts about Roe against Poe.
Fourth, Poe claims that Lowe erroneously found that his sanction was comparable with similarly situated students. Yet, Poe points to evidence that casts doubt on that conclusion. This includes a list of other Vanderbilt students who had similar charges and lacked disciplinary history, like Poe, but were not suspended….
In sum, each of the above create disputes of material fact [for a jury to resolve]….
But the court rejected plaintiff’s defamation claim, because plaintiff didn’t introduce enough evidence of damages (required for defamation under Tennessee law):
Poe’s defamation claim is based on the statement in Bourgoin’s March 9, 2023 letter to Roe that Poe “instigated” the harassing posts, which he argues is false because other posts about Roe preceded his. Poe claims that he was damaged by the statement because he was approached at his internship about his academic sanction, thereby suffering reputational harm. Poe also testified that the contents of Bourgoin’s letter were shared with other students, making him “embarrassed to … talk to other people at Vanderbilt.”
Based on the record, the Court can conclude that at least six people knew about Bourgoin’s letter to Roe: Bourgoin, Roe, Roe’s father, Roe’s mother, Poe, and Poe’s mother. Poe has not offered evidence that any of those people shared the letter with his internship employer or other students….
The court also rejected plaintiff’s intentional infliction of emotional distress claim (which, like the negligence claim, was based on how the suspension decision was conveyed to him):
Defendants argue that Poe cannot claim IIED based on an email Clapper sent to Bourgoin the night before the outcome call where she stated, inter alia, “His parents better have flown there. lol safe travels!” Clapper testified that the “lol” comment was in reference to the fact that “we [Clapper and Bourgoin] were working on a Sunday trying to still coordinate details[,] … [Bourgoin] [] had to travel[,] [n]either of us had [electric] power. There was a lot that could go wrong in this situation.” Defendants also point out that Poe did not see the email “until nearly a year later.” Defendants argue that this email, compared to how they otherwise responded to Poe’s mental health issues, does not amount to outrageous conduct.
Poe clarifies that he is not contending that Clapper’s email caused him “direct distress,” but rather it is “evidence of the mindset with which [Defendants] approached the delivery of a suspension to a student who they knew was suicidal and thus particularly susceptible to emotional distress.” Moreover, Poe points to other record evidence of Defendants’ antipathy toward him with respect to the delivery of the outcome. For example, Poe cites Jamerson’s comment that he was “not overly concerned” about Poe’s suicide risk after the outcome, when Clapper and Bourgoin were concerned that Poe would kill himself.
Even if Defendants’ conduct is offensive, Poe has not met his high burden of coming forward with admissible evidence that it was “atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” …
And the court also threw out Poe’s claim of tortious interference with business relations, and violations of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (a disability accommodation statute).
The District Court had earlier held that Poe may not proceed under a pseudonym, but that ruling is currently on appeal.
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week’s issue includes stories on:
The major overhaul of California’s development-killing environmental review law heading to the ballot.
Landlords and the Justice Department’s wrangling over a settlement for eviction moratorium losses.
President Donald Trump’s newfound opposition to a congressional crackdown on build-to-rent housing.
Measure To Reform California’s Landmark Environmental Law Headed for the Ballot
When people identify reasons why it takes so long to build anything in California, the state’s landmark environmental review law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is typically high on the list. Come November, voters will likely be asked whether they want to significantly streamline the law’s requirements.
This past week, the California Chamber of Commerce began submitting signatures to election officials to place a measure overhauling CEQA on the statewide general election ballot.
The chamber says it has collected nearly a million signatures, which is well in excess of the 546,651 it needs to qualify its initiative for the ballot.
CEQA requires government agencies to study and mitigate the environmental impacts of projects they have the discretion to approve or deny. Members of the public are empowered to sue an agency if they believe it approved a project without doing a thorough enough environmental review.
Simple though those requirements might sound, CEQA has become a vast, unpredictable area of law that can see a long list of projects, from housing to bike lanes to state college admission plans, bogged down in years of study and litigation.
The law has enabled a cynical shakedown racket whereby special interests with no real environmental objections to a project will threaten to delay it with CEQA litigation unless the sponsor provides some sought-after concession.
To reduce the burden of CEQA on building new things, the Chamber’s measure would create binding timelines for CEQA reviews and lawsuits for a broadly defined list of “essential projects” that includes housing, transportation infrastructure, water projects, energy projects, wildfire mitigation projects, and more.
Reviews would have to be completed within 365 days. Lawsuits would have to be decided within another 270 days.
That’s significantly faster than the yearslong average timelines of the most stringent forms of CEQA review. Subsequent CEQA litigation adds another two to five years on average to a project’s timeline. In extreme cases, CEQA review can last decades.
The Chamber’s measure would also change the scope of CEQA reviews from studying all “significant” environmental impacts to checking whether projects are in compliance with objective standards of existing environmental laws and regulations.
John Myers of the California Chamber of Commerce says their proposed measure is all about providing certainty to an often unpredictable and indeterminate CEQA process.
The initiative “seeks to provide clarity to the process of building the essential projects California needs,” Myers tells Reason. “We’re not changing a single environmental law. We are not guaranteeing that projects get built. We’re simply trying to provide certainty in how projects get reviewed.”
Even so, changing what is currently an amorphous “study everything” law into a checklist of regulatory compliance “would be a huge change,” says Christopher Elmendorf, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Basically it ends CEQA in anything like the form we’ve known it.”
In the past several years, the California Legislature has pared back CEQA largely by excluding certain types of projects from the law’s requirements entirely. But lawmakers have been a lot more reticent to reform what CEQA requires of the projects it still covers.
For instance, last year, lawmakers approved a major CEQA exemption for urban infill housing. But a bill attempting to streamline the CEQA process for projects it still covers died in the Legislature.
“A lot of people saw last year as a huge expenditure of political capital that wouldn’t be easy to repeat,” says Louis Mirante of the Bay Area Council, a business advocacy group supporting the Chamber’s CEQA reforms. “There are more things we should be doing to CEQA than it seems the Legislature is capable of.”
Landlords and the Justice Department Discuss Compensation for Eviction Moratorium
Landlords demanding compensation for the losses inflicted on them by the federal government’s illegal COVID-era eviction moratorium might have to settle for far less than they were expecting.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that property owners are in the midst of negotiating a settlement with the Department of Justice that would see them get $1.5 billion to cover the costs of the moratorium.
This is far less than the $23 billion plaintiffs had initially been asking for.
That landlords would get compensation at all for the federal moratorium was not guaranteed.
When property owners initially sued for compensation on the grounds that the moratorium was an uncompensated taking of their property, the government sought to dismiss the case.
The government paradoxically argued that because the Supreme Court had found the moratorium illegal, it hadn’t been authorized by law, and therefore, Congress couldn’t be held responsible for paying for it.
A federal claims court initially ruled with the government, but that decision was overturned by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The full Court of Appeals declined to rehear the case, and the federal government chose not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up landlords to get paid something.
While it was widely anticipated that the $20-billion-plus settlement landlords were asking for would get negotiated down, $1.5 billion is a pretty steep discount.
That’s perhaps a relief for taxpayers who’d be on the hook for paying compensation for an illegal eviction ban decided on by government officials. On the other hand, it’s not a great disincentive for the government to adopt a similar moratorium during the next crisis.
Trump Cools on Senate Bill That Restricts Build-To-Rent Housing
President Donald Trump is reportedly having second thoughts about his war on large single-family landlords.
Politicoreported yesterday evening that the president is displeased with a provision in the Senate-passed housing bill that requires large investors to sell off their single-family holdings, including build-to-rent housing. He almost posted about it on social media before holding off, according to Politico‘s sources.
If true, it’s an interesting change of pace.
Up to this point, Trump has been an eager combatant in the bipartisan war on large owners of single-family homes. He issued an executive order attempting to limit their activities in the housing market early in the year and called on Congress to go further in his State of the Union address.
The Senate-passed housing bill generally bans investors from owning more than 350 homes. It does allow them to purchase homes above that threshold if they’ve been purpose-built as rental housing. But those rentals would have to be sold off to individual owners within seven years.
Housing supply advocates, who otherwise support the Senate’s bill, have been raising the alarm about these restrictions on build-to-rent housing. They say it could destroy that sector of the housing market, which builds as much as 10 percent of new single-family homes each year.
Trump’s own executive order included a more robust carveout for build-to-rent housing. Even so, the White House had endorsed the Senate bill with its additional restrictions on build-to-rent housing.
The Senate bill has been stalled in the House, where lawmakers have raised complaints about the build-to-rent provisions as well as new grant funding and the exclusion of community banking reforms that were in the initial House bill.
With the exception of the build-to-rent provisions, the Senate-passed housing bill includes a number of grant program tweaks and regulatory changes aimed at increasing housing supply.
The build-to-rent provisions arguably turn the bill into a net negative for new housing supply. If Trump were able to convince both chambers to remove large investor restrictions from the legislation, it would go a long way toward ensuring that a housing bill actually leads to more housing.
Quick Links
Yet another New Jersey property owner is fending off her local government’s efforts to seize her land. Read some of Reason‘s past coverage of Garden State takings here and here.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D–Mich.) introduces an “unhoused persons bill of rights.”
The New York Times has a long heave on the difficulty of reclaiming one’s property once squatters move in.
A well-cited paper finding only a modest supply increase from upzoning turned out to be riddled with basic errors.
Italy’s prime minister is tired of people not paying their rent.
Per troppo tempo chi metteva in affitto una casa è rimasto senza tutele di fronte a occupazioni abusive, morosità e tempi troppo lunghi per rientrare in possesso del proprio immobile. Questo ha spinto molti proprietari a rinunciare ad affittare, aggravando la carenza di alloggi e…
Local governments in Massachusetts pull out the usual tricks to avoid state housing goals.
On its third attempt tonight, Marblehead Town Meeting approved an “MBTA Communities–compliant” district largely centered on the 125-year-old Tedesco Country Club, meeting 3A requirements on paper while all but assuring no new housing would be built.
From a long opinion today by Judge Waverly Crenshaw (M.D. Tenn.) in Poe v. Lowe:
Poe, a male Vanderbilt student, made social media posts about another male Vanderbilt student, Roe, and his sexual behaviors with females. [Citing court filing] showing posts by Poe’s Yik Yak account, including stating that “[Roe] is a rapist” and “[Roe] slipped me a roofie this fall, but I just wasn’t able to definitively proove [sic] it. When I brought it up to some of the [] brothers [from Roe’s fraternity] they tried to gaslight me about it” ….
Poe was not alone—a number of posts were made about Roe by other people, including other Vanderbilt students. [Citing court filing] containing Yik Yak posts by a female Vanderbilt student, L.N., including stating that she had “personal experience” with Roe and “he is a RAPIST, that is the truth and if you don’t believe it after so many girls have said it, there is nothing I can do to convince you” …. Once this came to Vanderbilt’s attention, Bourgoin, Vanderbilt’s Director of Student Accountability, Community Standards, and Academic Integrity, opened a disciplinary case against Poe, charging him with three violations of the Student Handbook …: disorderly conduct, harassment, and impersonating a University official or any other person….
Poe’s appeal was denied by Vanderbilt’s Chair of the Appellate Review Board (Lowe), and Poe was suspended for a year. Poe, who had attempted suicide after hearing of his punishment, sued Vanderbilt on various theories.
The court allowed Poe’s negligence claim to go forward based on how the disciplinary outcome was reported to him:
There is no dispute that Defendants were on notice of Poe’s serious mental health issues. [Citing record document] (Poe’s mother emailing Bourgoin and Clapper {[Vanderbilt’s] Director of Student Care Network and Student Care Coordination} that Poe “is now talking suicide We are absolutely convinced an adverse decision now will take his life“). Jamerson even testified that he had assessed Poe’s suicide risk at “moderate-to-elevated.” Defendants did not accommodate Poe’s mother’s request to move the outcome call one week. Yet, they still chose to engage in care planning with her to mitigate the risk of harm to Poe. [Citing record document] (Jamerson testifying that he “felt it was safe to move forward with adding additional precautions like having [Clapper] available to be on the [outcome] cal1, who is a licensed clinical social worker, also notifying the mom of when the date would be so that the mom was aware of when it was coming out.”).
Apparently, Defendants wanted Poe to have his mother with him during the outcome call, as evidenced by the email to his mother with the target date for the meeting. Clapper also testified that when she and Bourgoin began the outcome call with Poe, she asked Poe if his mother was there. Despite Poe telling them he lied to his mother {about the scheduling of the outcome call and [told] her that it was the following day}, Bourgoin and Clapper proceeded with the outcome call.
This is evidence from which a jury could conclude that the risk that Poe would commit suicide was sufficiently foreseeable to give rise to a duty of care. Moreover, having already decided to involve Poe’s mother, a jury could find that Defendants failed to exercise reasonable care by proceeding with the outcome call after learning that she was not there to support him.
The same analysis applies to the element of proximate causation. Defendants argue that Poe cannot establish causation, reasoning that his suicide attempt was not reasonably foreseeable in light of the precautionary steps they took to protect him. Critically, he “thwart[e]d one of the main aspects of their reasonable care plan” by lying to his mother about the date for the outcome call. But, again, Poe made Defendants aware at the outset of the outcome call that his mom was not with him. They proceeded anyway. There is a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether his suicide attempt was reasonably foreseeable, and summary judgment will be denied on the negligence claim….
The court also allowed Poe’s Title IX selective enforcement claim to go forward:
“In a selective enforcement claim, a plaintiff essentially asserts that even if he or she did violate a university policy, the decision to initiate disciplinary proceedings or the severity of the penalty imposed was motivated by gender bias.” “To prevail on his selective enforcement claim, [a plaintiff] must show that a similarly-situated member of the opposite sex was treated more favorably than the plaintiff due to his or her gender.”
The comparator in this case is a female student named L.N. Defendants argue that Poe and L.N. were not similarly situated because of the differences in timing, volume, and subject matter of their posts. Poe has come forward with sufficient admissible evidence for a reasonable jury to conclude that he and L.N. were similarly situated. It is undisputed that L.N. made at least twelve posts about Roe. Her posts about Roe were very similar to Poe’s—they accuse Roe of sexual misconduct. Therefore, there is a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether Poe and L.N. were similarly situated.
The remaining elements of a selective enforcement claim are whether Poe was treated less favorably than L.N. due to gender. It is undisputed that Bourgoin knew that Poe was male and L.N. was female. There is evidence that upon learning of L.N.’s identity, including her gender, Bourgoin apparently believed the accusation that Roe raped L.N., because he wanted to report the rape to Vanderbilt’s Title IX Director …. It is also undisputed that even after learning L.N.’s posts were knowingly false, she only received probation, whereas Poe was suspended for a year. Therefore, there is evidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that gender affected Vanderbilt’s decision to selectively enforce a disciplinary process against Poe….
And the court allowed much of Poe’s breach of contract claim to go forward, based on alleged violations of disciplinary process rules:
The Handbook … provides that students subject to disciplinary action may “examine all information that may form the basis for corrective action.” … Poe has come forward with admissible evidence that he did not have the opportunity to examine all information supporting the charges. For example, he testified that the charge sheet alleged he posted on “a single social media site.” It is undisputed, however, that Vanderbilt investigated him for posting on more than “a single social media site,” which was relied upon to discipline him. Likewise, Poe states that Vanderbilt never showed him the post in which he allegedly impersonated a Belmont University student….
The Handbook states that students in accountability proceedings have the opportunity “to call witnesses.” … Poe has presented admissible evidence to the contrary … [that] he was unable to call as witnesses other persons who made posts about Roe. For example, his attorneys tried to gather information from Greek Rank and Yik Yak. His attorneys advised Bourgoin that they were ultimately unable to subpoena information about other posts. There is evidence that Vanderbilt, on the other hand, knew the names of those other posters and, at a minimum, this would have been information relied upon by Vanderbilt that Poe would have been entitled to receive…. There is a genuine dispute of material fact regarding whether Bourgoin denied Poe the opportunity to call witnesses by withholding witnesses’ identities from Poe….
The Handbook affords students the right to an unbiased appeal if a student is found to have engaged in misconduct. In conducting the appeal, the Chair of the Appellate Review Board (Lowe) should be provided with and review “the entire record of the case,” the student’s appeal petition, and “all supporting information provided by the [student] petitioner … in the light most favorable to the petitioner.” …
First, [Poe] argues that Lowe did not review all of the materials available to her and instead merely rubber stamped Bourgoin’s decision. Poe relies on Lowe’s testimony that her appellate review was limited to a “Box file” from a digital sharing platform. She could not confirm under oath that she did in fact review everything in the Box file.
Second, Poe argues that the appeal documents omitted information reflecting Bourgoin’s bias against him, and this “sanitized file … infected Lowe’s review.” Lowe agrees that omission of information about Bourgoin’s negative personal views of Poe would be problematic. Poe also relies on a text message from Bourgoin to Jamerson stating, in part, “FYI to offline context. We’ve had countless interactions with [Poe] from accountability, honor, and multiple title ix things He is very unwell and not stable in my untrained assessment….” This text was “offline,” meaning it was not included in Poe’s disciplinary file.
Third, Poe argues that Bourgoin improperly shifted the burden of proof to Poe to prove his innocence. Lowe agreed that would be problematic. Bourgoin admits that he held Poe’s inability to present evidence of other posts about Roe against Poe.
Fourth, Poe claims that Lowe erroneously found that his sanction was comparable with similarly situated students. Yet, Poe points to evidence that casts doubt on that conclusion. This includes a list of other Vanderbilt students who had similar charges and lacked disciplinary history, like Poe, but were not suspended….
In sum, each of the above create disputes of material fact [for a jury to resolve]….
But the court rejected plaintiff’s defamation claim, because plaintiff didn’t introduce enough evidence of damages (required for defamation under Tennessee law):
Poe’s defamation claim is based on the statement in Bourgoin’s March 9, 2023 letter to Roe that Poe “instigated” the harassing posts, which he argues is false because other posts about Roe preceded his. Poe claims that he was damaged by the statement because he was approached at his internship about his academic sanction, thereby suffering reputational harm. Poe also testified that the contents of Bourgoin’s letter were shared with other students, making him “embarrassed to … talk to other people at Vanderbilt.”
Based on the record, the Court can conclude that at least six people knew about Bourgoin’s letter to Roe: Bourgoin, Roe, Roe’s father, Roe’s mother, Poe, and Poe’s mother. Poe has not offered evidence that any of those people shared the letter with his internship employer or other students….
The court also rejected plaintiff’s intentional infliction of emotional distress claim (which, like the negligence claim, was based on how the suspension decision was conveyed to him):
Defendants argue that Poe cannot claim IIED based on an email Clapper sent to Bourgoin the night before the outcome call where she stated, inter alia, “His parents better have flown there. lol safe travels!” Clapper testified that the “lol” comment was in reference to the fact that “we [Clapper and Bourgoin] were working on a Sunday trying to still coordinate details[,] … [Bourgoin] [] had to travel[,] [n]either of us had [electric] power. There was a lot that could go wrong in this situation.” Defendants also point out that Poe did not see the email “until nearly a year later.” Defendants argue that this email, compared to how they otherwise responded to Poe’s mental health issues, does not amount to outrageous conduct.
Poe clarifies that he is not contending that Clapper’s email caused him “direct distress,” but rather it is “evidence of the mindset with which [Defendants] approached the delivery of a suspension to a student who they knew was suicidal and thus particularly susceptible to emotional distress.” Moreover, Poe points to other record evidence of Defendants’ antipathy toward him with respect to the delivery of the outcome. For example, Poe cites Jamerson’s comment that he was “not overly concerned” about Poe’s suicide risk after the outcome, when Clapper and Bourgoin were concerned that Poe would kill himself.
Even if Defendants’ conduct is offensive, Poe has not met his high burden of coming forward with admissible evidence that it was “atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” …
And the court also threw out Poe’s claim of tortious interference with business relations, and violations of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (a disability accommodation statute).
The District Court had earlier held that Poe may not proceed under a pseudonym, but that ruling is currently on appeal.
