NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The he-said, she-said dispute between Metro Councilwoman Joy Kimbrough and Nashville businessman Ryan Moses has taken an unusual new twist.
Kimbrough has just filed a $40 million lawsuit against Moses, who filed an unsuccessful ethics complaint against the councilwoman last year.
As the Metro Ethics Conduct Board considered the complaint against Kimbrough last October, the board chair remarked, "It obviously is a challenging case because it boils down to a three-minute call."
In the $40 million lawsuit against Moses and his company, Best Brands, Kimbrough claims she faced defamation, slander, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The suit comes after the Metro Ethical Conduct Board in October dismissed the sworn ethics complaint Moses had filed against Kimbrough, alleging that during that three-minute phone call last April, Kimbrough demanded $500,000 from Moses to support his company's plan to build a liquor distribution warehouse in her district.
The board voted to dismiss the complaint, citing a lack of evidence and credibility issues.
Kimbrough's response?
The lawsuit, which calls out "Moses' defamatory, malicious, slanderous, libelous, reckless and tortious conduct," claims that his "blatant false allegations could have potentially subjected her to criminal prosecution and the loss of her law license."
"I think it's always a difficult case for any public official to win when somebody is complaining about their conduct in public office," Ken Paulson told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Paulson is a former journalist, an attorney, a First Amendment expert and director of the Free Speech Center at MTSU.
"The councilwoman has to prove it was a lie or that the defendant knew it was a lie, and that's a really high standard," Paulson explained, adding that reaching that standard in this case might be tough, given that when Kimbrough was questioned under oath at the Ethics meeting, she maintained she couldn't recall details of the call.
That prompted Moses' attorney, Ed Yarbrough, to admonish her, saying, "Now Miss Kimbrough, if you can't recall, that means you can't deny."
Paulson remarked, "So, it's not even a he-said, she-said. It's a he-said-she-said you can't remember. "
Kimbrough also maintains in her suit that the "false allegations [in the ethics complaint] cost her money, time, embarrassment, shame, damage to her reputation, loss of sleep, headaches, emotional distress and other...damages."
She included 67 pages of comments posted after our initial reporting on the ethics complaint, where she suggested that many of the posts indicated "Kimbrough had committed extortion, should be removed from office, charged and sent to prison."
Kimbrough called the comments "brutal, mean and evil."
Yet, it was Kimbrough who verbally attacked Moses at a community meeting shortly after he filed his ethics complaint, telling the packed auditorium, "I'm going to tell you right now, that liquor boy [referring to Moses] is a liar," and "Don't let some outside pimp [again referring to Moses] come in here and turn us against each other. "
And then there was the email she shared with us that she'd sent to Metro Legal, where she wrote, "Moses believes that he has family connections that make him untouchable." And called him a "spoiled, entitled, privileged, unhinged, lying crybaby."
Paulson suggested this might not be the last suit filed in this dispute.
"Libel suits work both ways, and so just as the councilwoman can sue this gentleman, so too can he sue if she says something about him that is untrue."
And Paulson added that no matter what comes of Kimbrough's lawsuit, it should not stop others from coming forward in the future.
"You're serving society when you're calling out an official you think is not doing a good job or may be engaged in misconduct," he explained.
Joy Kimbrough, through her attorney, declined our request for an interview.
Ryan Moses did not respond to our calls and texts.
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