Sen. Laughlin, Erie Reader are suing each other. What they claim

In July 2022, after a column critical of state Sen. Dan Laughlin appeared in the Erie Reader, stacks of copies of the free alternative newspaper were removed from racks at various gas stations.

Two people took the stacks of papers, Laughlin's wife testified at a deposition.

She identified the two as herself and the senator.

Peggy Laughlin testified that the column — a piece related to Donald Trump that was published in print on July 13, 2022, and posted online on July 14, 2022 — so upset her and her husband, a Republican whose 49th District includes most of Erie County, that they drove around separately after the column appeared and collected a total of "hundreds" of copies of the Erie Reader.

She said her purpose was not to read the newspaper herself.

Her purpose, Peggy Laughlin testified, was to "prevent maybe somebody from reading all of the ridiculous, unjustified, completely dishonest, unprovoked attack on my husband."

Peggy Laughlin said the column, by Democrat Jim Wertz, incensed her husband.

"His mood was extraordinarily angry, perhaps angrier than I've ever seen him," she testified during the deposition. "He was indignant about what we both considered to be an unjustified, dishonest, completely unprovoked published attack on him."

A lawyer asked Peggy Laughlin about what her husband did in response to the column.

"Do you remember the senator driving around Erie and collecting copies of the print publication from various gas stations?"

"Yes. Yes," Peggy Laughlin testified, according to a transcript that the Erie Times-News reviewed.

She was asked how many copies he took.

"I saw stacks of Erie Readers," she said.

She was asked how many papers she took.

"Hundreds," she testified.

Peggy Laughlin, who was deposed on May 19, 2023, said the newspapers were kept in the garage of the Laughlins' house in Millcreek Township, but were no longer there.

"We kept some and got rid of the rest," she testified.

The column in the Erie Reader landed the publication and Wertz, the columnist, in Erie County Common Pleas Court, where Dan Laughlin sued them for defamation in August 2022.

With the libel case advancing toward a January trial date, the disappearance of the copies of the Erie Reader in July 2022 has landed Dan and Peggy Laughlin in court.

The Erie Reader is suing the Laughlins. It is claiming they caused damages of $12,000 when, in July 2022, they "unlawfully and wrongfully took hundreds of newspapers and converted the same to their own use," according to a civil complaint the Erie Reader filed with an Erie magistrate judge on June 11.

Court battles take shape as Laughlin and Wertz face off at polls

One of the editors in chief and cofounders of the Erie Reader, Adam Welsh, filed the civil complaint. It does not involve Wertz, the Erie Reader's codefendant in the libel case.

The civil complaint nonetheless shows how much the legal feud between the Erie Reader, Laughlin and Wertz has escalated at the same time the two are engaged in a political fight — the race for state Senate in the 49th District, where Wertz, the Democratic nominee, is opposing Laughlin as he seeks reelection to a third consecutive four-year term.

The race is considered pivotal for control of the state Senate, where the GOP holds a 28-22 advantage. The Democrats have targeted the 49th District and two other senatorial districts in their effort to gain control of the upper chamber in the November election. A 25-25 deadlock would mean Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis would break the tie in any party-line vote.

Wertz, 45, a city of Erie resident and an associate dean at PennWest Edinboro, resigned as head of the Erie County Democratic Party in November to run against Laughlin, 62, who was a homebuilder before he entered politics. Wertz was the chair of the local Democrats and a contributing editor at the Erie Reader when he wrote the column that is the target of Laughlin's suit. Wertz stopped writing for the Erie Reader when he announced his candidacy for state Senate on Dec. 5.

Welsh said the deposition testimony in the libel case — a case that Dan Laughlin initiated and that led to the taking of the depositions — prompted the Erie Reader to sue over the disappearance of the copies of the newspaper following the publication of the column.

"We were dismayed to learn of this in the depositions," Welsh said in an interview.

He said the Erie Reader, though free, still costs money to print. He said businesses and others advertise in the monthly publication knowing that copies of the newspaper will be available to readers through distribution at gas stations, convenience stores and other locations throughout Erie County. The Erie Reader's print circulation was 10,500 copies for the issue published on July 13, 2022, Welsh said.

"So much goes into this print edition — time, ink, paper — all of it," Welsh said. Referring to the Laughlins, he said, "We are looking to recoup the costs caused by the defendants."

Laughlin characterized civil action as diversionary tactic

Dan Laughlin characterized the civil complaint as the Erie Reader's attempt to distract attention from the underlying libel case.

"This civil suit is a childish attempt to divert public attention from the fact they printed a defamatory article," Laughlin told the Erie Times-News. "That's my statement."

The Erie Reader filed the civil complaint before Erie 2nd Ward District Judge Ed Wilson, whose jurisdiction includes the area where the Erie Reader's offices are located at 1001 State St. Requests for damages are capped at $12,000 in civil cases filed before district magistrates. Lawsuits that request higher damages go to Common Pleas Court.

Welsh said the Erie Reader waited to file the complaint until it gathered more evidence in depositions, including Dan Laughlin's, which started in early April and is to resume soon. The Erie Reader filed the complaint within the two-year statute of limitations for most civil cases in Pennsylvania.

Welsh said the Erie Reader does not have a precise figure for its damages request. He said the Erie Reader does not know exactly how many copies of the newspaper disappeared.

Erie Reader says Laughlins 'intentionally interfered" with its distribution

The complaint claims that the Laughlins "conversion" of the newspapers "intentionally interfered with" the Erie Reader's "agreement with Erie businesses to distribute the newspapers for customers' use and reading." The complaint states the Erie Reader is seeking "damages, attorneys fees and costs for Defendants' unlawful conversion as well as Defendants' intentional interference with contractual relationships."

Welsh said the complaint goes beyond a focus on monetary damages. By collecting the newspapers, as the Erie Reader says the Laughlins did, Dan Laughlin impeded on free speech, Welsh said.

A constitutional argument is also behind the Erie Reader's defense in the libel case that Laughlin has been pursuing against it and Wertz since he filed it on Aug. 26, 2022. The Erie Reader and Wertz are seeking to get the case dismissed, arguing that the column, aimed at a public figure, is an opinion piece protected under the First Amendment.

"This has been going on for two years," Welsh said. "To have an elected public official go to these lengths to silence someone in the community — a small business — is really hard to comprehend."

Laughlin's libel suit on track for trial in January

In his libel suit, Laughlin is seeking $1 million in damages each from Wertz and the Erie Reader for "reputational, emotional and economic harm."

Laughlin has shown no signs of letting up on the case. In his latest pretrial move, Laughlin and his lawyers are pushing to have the presiding judge disqualify lawyers with the the nonprofit Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press from continuing to represent the Erie Reader and Wertz due to Wertz's status as a political candidate.

The representation of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press in the libel case is free. The committee is not involved in the case over the missing newspapers, Welsh said,

Judge Christopher St. John, a senior judge from Mercer County, heard arguments on the disqualification request at a hearing at the Erie County Courthouse on June 6. St. John is handling the case because all the judges on the Erie County Court of Common Pleas recused themselves due to potential conflicts of interest.

St. John said he would rule on the disqualification request after he receives proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law from the lawyers for the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press and Laughlin's lawyers, with the Philadelphia-based firm of Kleinbard.

St. John must also rule on separate matters related to the scope of the rest of Dan Laughlin's deposition, which started April 3. But St. John said he would rule on those matters after Laughlin's deposition resumes within 30 days.

Laughlin's failure to sit for a deposition earlier in the case led St. John to sanction him and his legal team $240 in March. Laughlin said he was following his lawyers' advice on sitting for the earlier deposition.

Once all the pretrial disputes are over, St. John said, a trial will occur in January. He scheduled a pretrial conference for Dec. 12.

"I know we need to move this case along," St. John said in court June 6.

The timeline means a trial in the libel case will not take place before Laughlin and Wertz face off in the general election on Nov. 5. Whether civil complaint over the taking of the newspapers will be unfinished by then is uncertain. A ruling at the magistrate level can be appealed to Common Pleas Court, a move that would extend the case for months.

2020 presidential election central to Wertz's column

The column at the center of the legal disputes was called "A Congressman and a State Senator Walk Into a Bar." The title referred to Laughlin and fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, of Butler, whose 16th Congressional District includes Erie.

Wertz in the column claimed Laughlin and Kelly "found themselves on a pardon request list" before then-President Donald Trump following the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Wertz based his assertion on a letter that then-U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama, sent to a Trump administration official in late January 2021.

Brooks wanted Trump to pardon any Republican who voted against certifying the election results, which would have included Kelly, or anyone who signed onto "the" amicus curiae brief, also known as a friend-of-the-court brief, in the case of Texas v. Pennsylvania, which sought to block the results of the election. The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the suit.

The names of Kelly and Laughlin and others weren't specifically stated in Brooks' pardon request.

The case also included more than one amicus brief. Kelly and Laughlin had signed onto different ones.

Laughlin said the brief he signed, filed Dec. 10, 2020, did not call for the election results to be set aside, but only sought the U.S. Supreme Court's "advice on a decision by the state Supreme Court to arbitrarily extend the deadline for mail-in ballots in the last election."

That didn't matter, Wertz contended in his column

Kelly responded by blasting the column as "a false narrative" at a news conference he called about a week after the column ran. He threatened to sue, but did not.

Kelly also demanded a retraction. The Erie Reader rejected the request and stood by the column.

Laughlin sued. He claimed the statements in the column were false and defamatory.

'It was pretty traumatic,' senator's wife says

Peggy Laughlin said she and her husband heard about the column around dinnertime the day the column appeared in print in July 2022.

After dinner, according to her deposition, they took a drive to get ice cream and pick up a copy of the Erie Reader. She read him the headline while he was driving. The column so perturbed her husband, she testified, that he pulled over to the side of the road.

"It was pretty traumatic, actually," Peggy Laughlin testified at her deposition, which Dan Laughlin, Wertz and the Erie Reader's Welsh attended. "It's traumatic to think about it now."

"It was traumatic for me because he has worked very hard to be fair and transparent and the voice of reason, and this completely dishonest, unjustified attack can quickly undo all of the good work that he has been trying to do."

Peggy Laughlin said the column misconstrued Laughlin's views about the 2020 presidential election. Unlike Rep. Kelly, Laughlin has largely rejected Trump in recent years.

More: In brief in Texas case, Laughlin says he's not claiming fraud but worried over Pa. action

"Another aspect of this," Peggy Laughlin testified about the column and her husband, "would be the length that he went to be transparent in his view of the elections, and then the misrepresentation and the lies that were published that dispute what he was on the record of having said about his views of the election."

Peggy Laughlin recounted how she and her husband drove around to collect copies of the Erie Reader. She said her effort to gather up copies of the newspaper and blunt the effect of Wertz's column did not last long.

"I gave up," Peggy Laughlin testified, "because I realized quickly that there was no way to prevent or impact in any way the effect that this would have."

Contact Ed Palattella at [email protected] or 814-870-1813. Follow him on X @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie Reader counters senator's libel lawsuit by suing him, wife