BREWSTER COUNTY — Last Thursday, a judge dismissed a lawsuit by Jeff Leach of Basecamp Terlingua against Katy Schwartz of Marfa. The Honorable Stephen Ables — sitting in for a series of swapped judges on the 394th District Court — ruled for the second time in the defendant’s favor, citing the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), which is intended to protect state residents from lawsuits retaliating against their expression of free speech.
Leach v. Schwartz has had a complex and turbulent journey through the court system. Schwartz (who also goes by the last name Milam) alleges that on the night of June 27, 2019, her then-boss Leach had pinned her down and told her he “gets what he wants” — the climax to an emotionally-heated series of discussions after Leach solicited Milam for a threesome with his partner, Anna Oakley.
A week later, Schwartz approached the Brewster County Sheriff’s Office to file a report about the incident but declined to press charges. She told a few other friends and co-workers, and over the next few months, a trickle of women filed their own complaints against Leach, alleging a range of abusive behavior from groping to rape.
On September 9 of that year, Leach filed a lawsuit alleging that he had “suffered substantial loss of his reputation and severe emotional distress” as a result of the allegations, which he maintained were false. The original petition did not name a dollar amount, but was seeking compensation for “mental anguish” and any money lost from his business as a result.
Around the same time, stickers with the slogan “KATY LIED” — which Leach would later claim was a reference to a Steely Dan album of the same name — started popping up around the Big Bend region. (Receipts produced in discovery showed the stickers were ordered by Leach’s partner, Oakley.)
The Big Bend Sentinel first reported on the issue on November 13, 2019. Basecamp Terlingua was booted from the platform AirBnB a week and a half later, forcing the company to cancel reservations and shift to an in-house online booking system.
Schwartz’s counsel filed a motion to dismiss the suit under the TCPA for the first time on October 9, 2019, arguing that telling others about the alleged incident was within her First Amendment right to free speech.
According to the State Bar of Texas, the TCPA was signed into law in 2011 to “protect citizens from retaliatory lawsuits seeking to intimidate or silence them on matters of public concern.” Filing a motion under the act allows defendants to potentially avoid expensive and lengthy litigation — once filed, discovery is put on hold until the court rules.
Schwartz’s motion argues that the spread of the news around small town Terlingua wasn’t an attempt to slander her former employer. “In good faith, [Schwartz] believes that she endured inappropriate and illegal harassment and assault while in the employment of [Leach], to such a degree that she was required to do the following: discuss this matter with other co-workers, friends, family and relevant community members; leave her employment at Basecamp; warn others of her opinion regarding the very real risks associated with Plaintiff; and file a police complaint.”
While a judge ruled in her favor on February 6, 2020, Schwartz’s TCPA motion was not filed according to schedule, thanks to a series of scheduling delays and hurdles. Getting a visiting judge to come to far-out Brewster County was difficult after District Judge Roy Ferguson recused himself early on in the case, and a significant court backlog contributed to the delay. “Therefore, the court finds, even if some matters are untimely, there is good cause to consider the Movant’s motion to dismiss,” Judge Stephen Ables wrote.
Leach appealed the case, and the Eighth Court of Appeals did not agree with the lower court’s decision to ignore the typical TCPA timeline — so the case was dropped back de novo into Ables’ court in the spring of 2022. (Almost simultaneously, 83rd District Attorney Ori White dismissed a building criminal case against Leach, who was indicted on rape charges involving a different alleged victim by a grand jury in February 2020.)
The new case set two years of a grueling discovery and deposition process in motion. In September of this year, Rae Leifeste, counsel for Leach, filed a Second Amended Petition which cut out much of his client’s complaint about emotional distress and instead focused on harm to his business caused by allegedly defamatory statements spread in the media and word of mouth.
Jodi Cole, counsel for Schwartz, quickly filed a new TCPA motion, arguing that Leach’s most recent petition was different enough from the document filed almost five years earlier that she could reset the clock.
Leifeste fired back, sending the judge a side-by-side comparison of the two documents and imploring him not to be swayed by “false statements and additional falsehoods.”
On November 7, Ables ruled in favor of Schwartz a second time, agreeing that Leach’s Second Amended Petition “introduces new essential facts … specifically … allegations that the Defendant made defamatory statements about actual rape and other undefined inappropriate sexual conduct.”
TCPA dismissals cover reasonable attorney fees for defendants, which the judge has yet to determine. (Schwartz’s first TCPA motion to dismiss requested $5,000.)
Cole was elated by the judge’s dismissal. “Katy’s victory is a win for us all and a stand for freedom of speech,” she said. “This case was about defending our constitutional rights, and last week, we won together!”
For Schwartz, the fight is not yet over — a counter-suit against Leach and Oakley, filed in July 2022, is still pending. “Over five years after I was sued for telling my truth, I finally feel some sort of vindication,” she wrote to The Sentinel. “I stood my ground all this time for the same reason I filed a police report to begin with — to protect women. We should all be able to speak freely about our experiences to protect our community and I will always fight for that.”
Leach and Leifeste did not respond to requests for comment for this story.