Santa Rosa Commissioner Kerry Smith files defamation lawsuit against homebuilder Edwin Henry

Santa Rosa County Commissioner Kerry Smith has made good on his pledge to sue developer Edwin Henry for defamation.

In a lawsuit filed Nov. 20, Smith charges Henry, Clarence "Chip" Case and two of Case's businesses, Spartan Strategies and Jefferson Monroe Consulting, with producing a 2022 campaign mailer that contained false and defamatory information alleging a non-existent criminal past.

The flyer, paid for by Henry and produced by Case, stated Smith had been found guilty "several times" in another Florida county of domestic violence against his then wife. It also claimed he subsequently violated probation after being found guilty of domestic violence.

Law enforcement and court documents do not support much of what appeared in the flyer. Smith has been taken into custody twice on domestic calls relating to an ex-wife. He was arrested once in 2003 on a battery charge that was later dropped, and a second time in 2005 on what Smith claimed to be a trumped up charge of violating a domestic violence injunction.

The 2005 case went to court and Smith said he was acquitted when a primary witness changed his story. Court documents confirm the acquittal.

Smith is asking the court find the statements made against him to be false and an order issued to retract them and prevent Henry and Case from repeating them. He seeks in excess of $50,000 for economic and compensatory damages along with interest, as well as whatever further relief the court decides to award.

"Mr. Smith has never been found guilty of domestic violence and has never been found guilty of violating probation," the lawsuit states. "Most importantly, Mr. Smith has never been found guilty of harming or battering a woman."

State Rep. Alex Andrade, an attorney by trade who filed the lawsuit on Smith's behalf, said that the legal repercussions Henry and Case face are well established in law.

"If you say someone is a wife beater, that is defamation per se and you don't have to prove actual damages. If you say it, and it's a false statement, it's egregious enough that everyone knows it would damage your character," he said. "It is the kind of case I'm happy to take, because it has merit."

The lawsuit also seeks damages from Henry for "negligent supervision." It states Henry knew at the time he paid Case to produce the mailer defaming Smith that he was aware of Case's "proclivity for making defamatory statements."

"Henry owed a duty to Smith to confirm the veracity of the statements made," the lawsuit said. "Mr. Smith has been forced to incur legal expenses to preserve his reputation by suing as a result of Henry's negligent supervision."

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Smith said in October he was considering suing Henry and Case. His comment followed the settlement of a lawsuit he had filed a year earlier in an effort to expose the parties responsible for the misleading campaign mailer. The mailer had appeared in Santa Rosa County mailboxes just ahead of the August 2022 Republican primary.

As part of a settlement reached in favor of Smith, Mark Zubaly, who runs a direct mail system business in Tallahassee, was forced to turn over documents that identified Henry, a Pace resident and owner of Henry Company Homes, and Case, who is listed as the executive director of the Florida Faith and Freedom Coalition, as being behind the production of the offensive mailer.

Included among the documents Zubaly turned over was an email from Henry to Case. The email, dated July 18, 2022, bears the subject line "Kerry Smith."

"This is the guy I want to do an independent campaign against based on his criminal record," Henry said in the email to Case. "He is a candidate for County Commission in District 2. The guy I am supporting is Rickie Cotton."

Smith's ultimately successful campaign for county commission was based partly on his favoring impact fees that would impose infrastructure development costs of home builders like Henry. Court records showed Henry paid $13,000 to have the anti-Smith mailer produced.

Reached for comment following the first settlement, Henry sent a written statement that restated the unsubstantiated charges he had initially aimed at Smith. He was not immediately available for comment on the current lawsuit.

More emails obtained through the legal settlement provide messages sent back and fourth between Case and Zubaly as the mailer was being developed. In one of those, Case, after looking over a copy of the flyer mid-production, states, “I like that! It’s getting hot!” according to the recently filed lawsuit.

Zubaly provided a sworn affidavit listing Henry and Case as among those with "personal knowledge of the creation, design, distribution and publication of the subject mailer."

The mailer cited an opinion article published by the South Santa Rosa News as its source of information about Smith's past. "The citation to the article was designed to make the false defamatory claims in the mailer appear credible," the original lawsuit said.

One aspect of the flyer Andrade said he found "personally egregious" was its use of references to deceased Cassie Carli, who is widely believed to have died at the hands of an abusive ex-boyfriend.

“Our community has been rocked with domestic violence headlines,” the flyer states, along with, “We should not invite someone with a long history of domestic violence to our County Commission.”

"Cassie’s father received one of these mailers in his mailbox a few months after his daughter was murdered," Andrade said following the settlement of the first lawsuit.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Santa Rosa Commissioner sues homebuilder Edwin Henry for defamation