Dem claims she was smeared by Chester Heights GOP
Claims GOP smeared her during mayoral race
PHILADELPHIA » The 2017 Democratic candidate for mayor in Chester Heights has filed a defamation suit against a dozen defendants, including sitting Republican Mayor Stacey Smith, for an alleged smear campaign during the election.
Smith defeated Joy Fox for the mayor position 443365, according to election results posted on the Delaware County website.
The suit filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court claims Smith and the other defendants, including four council members who also secured seats in the election, orchestrated a “deliberate, malicious and defamatory” campaign to falsely represent that Fox had been criminally charged with writing bad checks in North Carolina in 1997.
“People get desperate,” said attorney Bryan Lentz, a former state representative representing Fox. “I guess it was a bad year for Republicans with the county going Democrat. They probably felt they had to throw everything but the kitchen sink at her.”
Others named in the complaint include Constable Stephen B. Luongo, Council Members Drew Baum, Steve Cocozza, Ginamarie Ellis and Theresa M. Agostinelli, Tax Collector Maryann Furlong and the Republican Committee of Chester Heights.
None of the defendants contacted for this story responded to emails or phone calls seeking comment. It was unclear Tuesday if any were represented by counsel.
Fox, who works as a Realtor, says the allegedly defamatory statements have damaged her ability to earn a living, destroyed her reputation among co-workers, friends, clients and the community at large, and caused her to seek medical treatment related to stress, anxiety and depression.
She is alleging three claims for defamation, false light and civil conspiracy, for which she is seeking damages of more than $50,000.
Fox says the defendants conducted background checks on her through three different for-profit websites and found a criminal result for the name “Joyce M. Watkins” in North Carolina.
Watkins is Fox’s maiden name and her middle name is Michelle, but the complaint indicates she has never gone by “Joyce” and her birth certificate shows her given name is “Joy.”
Though one result returned for a traffic ticket in 2015 was correct, the complaint claims that is the only reliable information that can be attributed to Fox.
“Importantly, Joyce M. Watkins is a totally different person who is in no way related or connected to Mrs. Fox,” according to the suit.
The websites used for these background checks warn users to exercise “extreme caution” when interpreting the results, and in at least one instance warned that the records on display “most likely do not belong to Joy Michelle Fox,” according to the complaint.
Fox says the defendants ignored those warnings, blacked them out of posted materials, and appended her name to the criminal record for Joyce M. Watkins in a document that was a “mish mash” of different information.
The defendants then disseminated and promoted the false claims through hundreds of direct mailers and on social media sites, erected billboards and directed voters to a website they created to further spread the allegedly defamatory information, the complaint says.
The website has since been disabled, but the suit notes that step was taken a month after the election and only after Lentz sent the defendants a letter advising of pending litigation.
“Worse still, after Mrs. Fox provided information that any reasonable person would have relied on to conclude the statements were false, defendants continued to promote the false statements and defend them as true by telling more lies,” the complaint says.
Fox and others had several communications with the defendants over social media in which attempts were made to prove that she was not the person identified in the allegedly bogus documents, according to the suit, including posting her birth certificate.
In one instance where Fox informed the defendants that what they had done was libel, Ellis responded that the information was supported by “six background check reporting agencies,” according to the complaint, though the other three agencies were never revealed.
In another instance that came as a response to Fox reporting that she had conducted an FBI background check on herself that showed no criminal record, the defendants responded by indicating such a check would be irrelevant for the crime reported and had “facts backed up with data certified by the state that brought the charges and by multiple agencies cross referenced repeatedly,” according to the suit.
The complaint indicates there was no record from North Carolina connecting Watkins to Fox, nor were any results “certified by the state.”
The defendants additionally claimed that Joy Fox and Joyce Watkins had the same name, high school graduation date, same addresses in the same towns, same names of parents and siblings, same employers and same wedding date, the suit says.
“None of the web searches associated the plaintiff’s name, birthday, high school or any of the other items listed with the arrest of Joyce M. Watkins in North Carolina,” the complaint says.
The suit also claims none of the defendants have taken any steps to issue a public apology or otherwise mitigate the alleged damage done to Fox’s reputation.
The suit states that when one resident asked Ellis at a public meeting in January why the defendants had not issued an apology, she responded, “We only shared information that is publicly available. We just brought people’s awareness to it.”
“The document created by the defendants from a mish mash of for-profit websites (is) in no way a reflection of publicly available information,” the complaint says. “The publicly available information would indicate to the reader that Mrs. Fox has had a traffic ticket and is not a criminal.”