No Injunction in Defamation and Copyright Case Stemming from “Africatown International Design Competition”

From Magistrate Judge Gray Borden’s opinion Friday in Studiorotan LLC v. Howell (N.D. Ala.):

A team of researchers discovered the wreckage of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship in the United States, in 2018. The Clotilda “illegally brought enslaved individuals from Africa into Alabama around 1860, where the ship was scuttled and burned to hide evidence of illegal slave trading.” Many of these slaves returned after the Civil War and founded Africatown near Mobile, Alabama….

Renee Kemp-Rotan, “an internationally regarded urban designer and master planner,” operates Studiorotan. Defendant M.O.V.E. Gulf Coast CDC (“M.O.V.E.”) “invited Studiorotan to Africatown and asked Studiorotan to be involved in a project that would bring many community-based, non-coordinated projects into a comprehensive plan, design and development for Africatown.” In that vein, Studiorotan, M.O.V.E., and Defendant Vickii Howell developed a competition—the Africatown International Design Competition—”for professional architects to submit design boards and essays” related to the “Clotilda Discovery and furthering preservation and revitalization of the Africatown community.”

According to the complaint, Studiorotan and M.O.V.E. entered into a contract under which Studiorotan “would provide its skills as a Professional Competition Advisor in exchange for $100,000.” Kemp-Rotan “was the primary Professional Competition Advisor,” while Howell served as “the Competition Coordinator for M.O.V.E. and the primary point of contact between Studiorotan and M.O.V.E.” “In furtherance of the Agreement, Studiorotan conducted the competition, which included programming four sites and 16 venues, creating design program challenges, and securing sponsorships and funding from national organizations such as the American Institute of Architects (AIA), National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), and Visit Mobile.” Additionally, Studiorotan “created a significant amount [of] original intellectual property, including design challenges, framework documents, and animations used for the Competition.” …

Studiorotan filed its complaint against Howell and M.O.V.E. after the business relationship soured. Among other things, Studiorotan alleges:

• At Howell’s direction, M.O.V.E. began misappropriating the work done by Studiorotan.
• Howell misrepresented the ownership of the intellectual property by claiming that the competition results and Studiorotan’s work belonged to M.O.V.E. exclusively.
• Howell disseminated intellectual property created by Studiorotan to solicit funding for M.O.V.E.
• M.O.V.E. used Studiorotan’s intellectual property to pitch a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
• M.O.V.E. directly benefitted from the use of Studiorotan’s intellectual property in its fundraising efforts and raised “tens of thousands of dollars” from Studiorotan’s work.
• Howell disseminated false and defamatory information to Africatown descendants and representatives from the World Monuments Fund to discredit Kemp-Rotan and Studiorotan….

The court had a lot to say on these matters (read the opinion for more), but ultimately denied the injunction. As to copyright infringement, it found that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim, at least in part, but that they hadn’t shown irreparable injury, and thus weren’t entitled to a preliminary injunction:

The court is hard pressed to find any evidence of an actual and imminent injury flowing from the use of Poster 1 and the competition videos that cannot be compensated by money damages. For example, Studiorotan did not offer any evidence of recent traffic (or any traffic) to the competition website or proof that Howell or M.O.V.E. are currently using or plan to use the copyrighted poster and thumbnails in the future beyond their existing placement on the website. And although the website contains a request for donations, Studiorotan did not present any evidence that Howell or M.O.V.E. received donations through the website. These omissions are especially telling when the design competition ended in 2023…. Finally, Studiorotan’s failure to move for a preliminary injunction until more than ten months after Kemp-Rotan warned Howell and M.O.V.E. that they were infringing on her copyrights substantially undermines its claim of irreparable harm and request for emergency relief….

And the court concluded that the First Amendment barred a preliminary injunction on the defamation claim:

The courts are divided on the question whether prior restraints [such as injunctions] of defamatory statements violate the First Amendment. Traditionally, many courts have doubted the constitutionality of injunctions to enjoin speech under both the common law and the First Amendment prior restraint doctrine. More recently, however, six federal circuit courts have concluded that a narrowly tailored permanent injunction is constitutionally permissible after an adjudication on the merits. The courts in this “modern” camp conclude that “once a judge or jury has made a final determination that the speech at issue is defamatory, an injunction prohibiting the defendant from repeating the defamatory speech does not constitute a prohibited prior restraint on speech.” The Eleventh Circuit has not weighed in on the issue.

Regardless of this evolving doctrine, it would be extraordinary for a federal court to enter a preliminary injunction on a defamation claim. This is because a preliminary injunction does not follow an adjudication on the merits of the defamation claim—something all circuits that permit an injunction on prior speech require before its issuance.

Here, there has not been a final determination that any of the defendants’ statements are false and defamatory. “[G]ranting a preliminary injunction on this basis would require this [c]ourt to evaluate [Defendant’s] speech and, at a minimum, pass judgment on the truth or falsity of that speech and its potential for harm.” The court refuses to do so. For this reason, the motion for a preliminary injunction on the defamation claim is due to be denied.

That analysis seems correct to me, for reasons I’ve outlined in the Anti-Libel Injunctions article.