Trial starts Monday on slander claim against Cedar Rapids council member

CEDAR RAPIDS — A lawsuit accusing a former City Council member of slander during a council meeting is set to go to trial this month.

The issue began in 2011, when a couple of builders asked the city to allow homes to be built on piers or posts without continuous and frost-protected foundations.

The City Council voted 5-3 against changing its ordinance, saying, in part, that a continuous foundation made sense given Iowa's frost-thaw cycle.

Don Karr, then a City Council member, expressed strong opposition to building homes without continuous foundations at an Oct. 25, 2011, council meeting and offered specific comments about builder Dave Stutzman.

In June 2012, Stutzman sued Karr, saying Karr's comments at the 2011 meeting slandered and defamed him.

A jury trial in the case is slated to start Monday in Linn County District Court.

The lawsuit, filed by Cedar Rapids lawyers Larry Thorson and Richard Pundt on Stutzman's behalf, says Karr's statements at the 2011 council meeting were 'false, erroneous and served to attack the integrity and moral character' of Stutzman. Karr's comments presented Stutzman in 'a light of contempt, hatred and ridicule thereby depriving (him) of public confidence and social standing and/or business dealings,' the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit says 'the gist' of Karr's comments at the meeting was that Stutzman was 'untrustworthy' and 'had committed insurance fraud and built buildings without building permits and had built buildings that were overpriced and unsafe.'

The lawsuit further claims Karr's comments were made 'with malicious design and purpose of injuring and damaging' Stutzman.

Assistant City Attorney Mo Sheronick is representing Karr, a one-term, at-large City Council member, because Karr made the comments as a council member. Karr chose not to seek re-election last November.

Lawyers on both sides of the case have said in court documents they may call Mayor Ron Corbett and other City Council members to testify.

In a pretrial filing, Sheronick said that if the statements are found to be slanderous, Stutzman must establish the amount of damages he is entitled to. He will not be entitled to damages if a statement is found to be slanderous but 'substantially true,' Sheronick said.

Sheronick contends that Karr enjoyed a certain privilege as a council member speaking at a council meeting, and as a result, his comments about Stutzman, if slanderous, must have been made with 'actual malice' for Stutzman to have been damaged.

At the meeting in question, Karr spoke at length against setting aside the city's requirement for continuous frost-protected foundations.

In the meeting transcript, Karr, a longtime plumbing contractor, talked about how he had considered working with Stutzman at one point years earlier but concluded that building homes without continuous foundations was not a technique he wanted to practice.

In the 5-3 vote to keep the city's foundation rule in place, Mayor Ron Corbett and council members Tom Podzimek and Chuck Swore wanted to change the city ordinance, while Karr and council colleagues Kris Gulick, Justin Shields, Monica Vernon and Chuck Wieneke voted to keep the foundation rule in place.