Judge Sides With Publishers of Rio Dell Times in First Amendment Ruling Against Arcata Attorney and Client

by Ryan Burns

Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Gregory J. Kreis last week ruled in favor of Sharon and Steve Wolff, owners and publishers of the local news site Rio Dell Times, in a matter that pitted accusations of libel, slander and harassment against the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment.

In his ruling, Judge Kreis ordered attorney Chris Hamer, of Arcata firm Stokes, Hamer, Kirk & Eads, and her client, Royce Mendonca, to pay more than $53,000 in attorney’s fees to the Wolffs’ representative, Sacramento-based Paul Nicholas Boylan, who specializes in media and free speech matters. [DISCLOSURE: Boylan has also represented the Lost Coast Outpost in the past.]

The ruling stems from a contentious legal battle over the conservatorship of Sharon Wolff’s elderly mother and father-in-law, Barbara and Ronald Keller. In 2021, the probate court appointed Mendonca as conservator of the Kellers, much to the frustration of the Wolffs, who characterized the situation as a “court-sanctioned kidnapping.” (They had filed a competing conservatorship request.)

In a press release sent out Thursday, Sharon Wolff alleged that Hamer helped Mendonca, a “distant relative” of her stepfather, remove the elderly couple from the Wolffs’ Fortuna home shortly before a conservatorship hearing “with no explanation.”

“And then they had mom and Ron declared mentally incompetent, which meant they could control mom and Ron completely. That’s what it felt like and looked like, and I said so in the Rio Dell Times,” Sharon Wolff said, adding, “This is a cautionary tale for all adult children of Alzheimer’s and dementia victims.” 

Reached by phone this morning, Hamer said that after losing the conservatorship decision, Sharon Wolff lashed out with wild allegations online and in a series of letters.

“She was a sore loser, and she has been libeling and slandering us, me and my client, since the order saying that she lost and we won,” Hamer said.

As described in Kreis’s decision, the Wolffs chronicled their grievances in the conservatorship case on riodelltimes.com, accusing Hamer of lying and fraud, among other allegations, while accusing Mendonca of being a virtual stranger to the Kellers who kidnapped them and pursued conservatorship so he could steal their money. (Hamer says that’s false and that, in fact, the Kellers personally nominated Mendonca as their preferred conservator.)

Last summer, Hamer filed two petitions on behalf of Mendonca, seeking injunctions to prevent the Wolffs from libel, slander and harassment of both Mendonca and herself. They also asked the judge to order the Wolffs “to immediately remove all existing false and derogatory posting, audio files, articles, statements, letters and pictures” about Mendonca and Hamer from their website.

The petitions also complained about a series of letters that accused Mendonca of elder financial fraud and abuse, letters that the Wolffs sent to Humboldt County Superior Court judges, federal state and local officials and various media outlets, including the Times-Standard, Lost Coast Outpost, Redheaded Blackbelt and North Coast Journal.

Hamer described these writings as “a campaign of daily disparagement.”

“This imposed a considerable burden and distraction on administration of the conservatorships,” Hamer said in an emailed statement. “Instead of filing independent civil lawsuits for damages for defamation, Royce Mendonca, as the conservator of both Ronald and Barbara Keller, filed petitions requesting that the court simply instruct Sharon and Steve Wolff to cease libeling Royce Mendonca, the conservator, and his attorney.”

In response to that filing, the Wolffs retained Boylan, and last September, Boylan filed what’s known as an “anti-SLAPP” motion, accusing Hamer and Mendonca of trying to stifle the Wolffs’ free speech rights through a “strategic lawsuit against public participation.”

“The Wollfs were the victims of the legal system to a degree I’ve never encountered before,” Boylan said in an email to the Outpost. “Sharon’s mother was legally removed from her life, and then the attorney who helped do that used the inequities in the legal system (i.e., the often crushing costs of defense) to censor free speech and the right to petition.”

Hamer and Mendonca wound up dismissing their petitions after being told that they should have been filed them as independent civil actions, rather than petitions in the context of the conservatorship proceedings. Boylan then sought to recoup his legal fees from Hamer and Mendonca, citing a rate of $750 per hour.

Hamer said it was unfair of Boylan to seek reimbursement from herself and her client, saying “there is no legal authority whatsoever supporting such a request.”

In his ruling, filed on June 8, Kries says that while not all of the Wolffs’ statements have concerned matters of public interest, “the ones concerning Chris Hamer and her activities as a lawyer in connection with the case are of public interest in that they seek to inform the public about alleged abuses of public court processes designed to protect vulnerable members of the public.”

Kries also ruled that Boylan and the Wolffs would have prevailed on their anti-SLAPP motion and are thus entitled to attorney’s fees and costs. (He wound up using an hourly rate of $500 to calculate the amount due to Boylan: $53,445.34.)

“This is a true David and Goliath story, —  the largest law firm in Humboldt County against the smallest local newspaper, suing them for the exercise of constitutionally protected rights,” Boylan is quoted as saying in a press release from the Wolffs. (He confirmed to the Outpost that the quote is accurate.) “It is rare to encounter people this deserving of assistance,” he added.

Sharon Wolff described the ruling as “a wonderful outcome to a very bad chapter in my life” and said, “Hamer and Mendonca were using my mom and Ron’s money to finance two lawsuits for [their own] benefit. I am grateful that the Court put a stop to it.”

Hamer reiterated that she considers the imposition of fees on Mendonca and herself to be unprecedented, saying, “[T]here is not a single decided case where a judge has ever done this.”

She vowed to appeal the ruling.

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Judge Sides With Publishers of Rio Dell Times in First Amendment Ruling Against Arcata Attorney and Client