Mazzeo v. Gibbons: Facts are for jurors to decide

How’d you like to be on the jury hearing the case of Mazzeo v. Gibbons, et al.?

As Jane Ann Morrison reports today, federal Judge Roger Hunt has pared down Chrissy Mazzeo’s civil lawsuit against Gov. Jim Gibbons, his campaign adviser Sig Rogich, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and former Sheriff Bill Young to two matters of genuinely disputable facts that a jury must weigh.

One, did then-candidate and Congressman Gibbons follow cocktail waitress Mazzeo into a parking garage on a rainy night in October 2006 and physically commit battery by grabbing her arms and pressing her against a wall while threatening to sexually assault her? Hunt noted that while surveillance video failed to capture images of either, Mazzeo has produced witnesses who saw them together. So a jury must decide who to believe.

Two, did the defendants violate Mazzeo’s First Amendment free speech rights as protected in U.S. Code (Title 42, Chapter 21, Subchapter I, Section 1983) by conspiring to “retaliate against and chill political expression” while acting under the color of state law? Hunt found this clearly applied to Metro and Young as police and that it applied to Gibbons and Rogich because of their “common objective: to minimize any political harm to Gibbons from the alleged incident.” So a jury must decide.

Section 1983 reads in part: “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law …”

Though no one but the defendants knows what was said, telephone records reveal numerous conversations between various defendants the night of the incident and the next day.

“The evidence also shows that Defendants participated in multiple private telephone conversations during which they discussed the incident and Mazzeo’s allegations,” Judge Hunt writes. “Viewing the parties’ frequent communication and their common objective in the light most favorable to Mazzeo as the nonmoving party, the Court concludes that Mazzeo has raised a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether Defendants came to an agreement or meeting of the minds to violate her constitutional rights. The Court therefore finds that Mazzeo has sufficiently shown that Rogich and Gibbons acted under color of state law to survive summary judgment on such basis.”

Among the triable facts cited by Hunt are:

— Detectives said she recanted her allegations, but Mazzeo said she told them she feared the prosecution would become a “three ring circus” and she feared going against someone as powerful as Gibbons.

— Young called Mazzeo’s account a “hokey story.”

— Rogich said her allegations had the “earmarks of a political dirty trick.”

Unless the case is settled, a jury will have to decide who is more believable.