A Gilbert resident and frequent critic of Mayor Brigette Peterson is part of two notices of claim against the town filed Monday related to his ejection from a September town council meeting.
Brandon Ryff, who has been a critic of the mayor since a Morrison Ranch apartment proposal came under scrutiny in 2019, is part of the two notices. A notice of claim can be a precursor to a lawsuit.
The first is an amended claim to one originally filed Oct. 20, in which Ryff, Ryan Handelsman and Joanne Terry say they were denied their First Amendment rights to protest when Peterson directed police to remove them from the Sept. 20, 2022, council meeting. The three were standing in the back holding signs that read “Stop Lying.” All three are parties to the notice of claim.
The three were part of a large crowd at that meeting opposed to the Ranch, a proposed light-industrial project next to a Morrison Ranch neighborhood. The proposal is tabled from council review as developers and neighbors seek to revise the proposal in a way that would be acceptable to the neighborhood.
The second claim is new and asserts Ryff was defamed and subject to false light invasion of privacy. That came from statements Peterson made about the behavior that led to the ejections. She characterized it as “not within the parameters of decorum” including “clapping, shouting and interruptions” that persisted, according to the notice of claim.
The notice says the mayor’s statements appeared in a private investigator’s ethics report and subsequent media stories.
It also challenges as false a Peterson statement that she was unaware Ryff was in the audience or one of the people she had ejected. Peterson has said she was not wearing her glasses and could not distinguish the people in the back of the room.
“The Mayor made this false claim against Dr. Ryff in (a) self-serving manner designed to justify her unconstitutional actions as being warranted and at the same time, defamed Dr. Ryff and cast him in a false light as a bully,” the suit read.
The Town Attorney’s Office is reviewing the claims, Gilbert spokesperson Jennifer Harrison said.
The second claim alleges patients at Ryff’s Scottsdale dental practice had seen news reports about the meeting and made comments to him. It says Ryff’s ability to make a living relies heavily on his reputation and current and prospective patients “undoubtedly” have seen or will see the comment and decide to see someone else for their dentistry needs.
The claim from Ryff, Handelsman and Terry seeks $250,000 to settle. The false light claim from Ryff seeks $750,000 to settle.
The first notice of claim from Ryff, Handelsman and Terry, filed Oct. 20, 2022, originally sought $1 to settle along with an apology from the mayor and “remedial” First Amendment training.
In an email to the Daily Independent, Ryff said the “completely avoidable” legal claim is moving forward because of the mayor’s refusal to apologize for violating the trio’s constitutional rights.
“While we spend our money defending our First Amendment rights, the mayor will be spending taxpayer money defending her ego,” Ryff wrote in the email.
Ryff noted that the mayor had rejected their small offer to settle the case.
“Instead of apologizing, learning from her mistakes and being a leader, the mayor doubled down on dumb,” Ryff wrote. “Like a petulant child, the mayor retaliated by issuing public statements with patently false claims against me, in (an) effort to harm my reputation and neutralize the impact of my political opposition against her. Because of her actions, a dollar and an apology has now turned into something much bigger and much worse.”
Attorney Timothy La Sota represents the claimants in both actions.
Council meetings do have limits on what can be said or done by audience members, according to Nancy Davidson, general counsel for the Arizona League of Cities and Towns.
Davidson said she was not familiar with the specifics of what happened in Gilbert. However, she said residents have more free-speech protection outside the building and in free-speech areas like parks than in public meetings, considered to be “limited public forums” and thus subject to “time, place, manner” restrictions about what is allowed in the meeting.
“It doesn't have to be necessarily something egregious,” Davidson said about what might be considered disruptive.
The notice of claim acknowledges that council is a limited public forum subject to time, place and manner restrictions.
La Sota writes in the notices that “the government may moderately limit expressive activity … so long as restrictions are both viewpoint neutral, equally and consistently enforced as well narrowly tailored to meet the needs of the governing body to conduct its business, free of actual disruptions.”
La Sota argued the trio’s actions were not disruptive, the town did not meet those standards and the mayor targeted Ryff and Handelsman as political foes.
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on Twitter. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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