Judge tosses suit claiming wrongful death defendant was defamed on law firm website
A judge in King County, Washington, has dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of a wrongful death defendant who claims the law firm that is suing her defamed her on its website.
In a decision last week, Judge James Rogers tossed the defamation suit filed on behalf of Tracy McNamara, the Seattle Times reports. Rogers said the website statements about the wrongful death case against McNamara were protected by the fair reporting privilege.
The wrongful death suit accuses McNamara in the shooting death of her husband, who is also her uncle. McNamara denies killing her husband, Tim McNamara, who died from a gunshot wound to the back of his head outside their home in Belize on Christmas Day 2014. Tim McNamara’s death was originally ruled a suicide, but the cause of death was later changed to murder. A warrant was reportedly issued for Tracy McNamara’s arrest, but she had already left the country.
Lawyer Karen Koehler and her law firm, Stritmatter Kessler Whelan Koehler Moore Kahler, represent Tim McNamara’s adult children in the wrongful death suit against Tracy McNamara. The allegations in the wrongful death complaint, Rogers said in his dismissal order, “are incendiary: incest, undue influence in financial matters, deliberate isolation from family members, and murder in a foreign country. Of course, Ms. McNamara hotly disputes these allegations.”
Tracy McNamara had claimed Koehler’s law firm inaccurately stated on the website that an “Interpol warrant” had been issued for her arrest. In fact, Interpol had posted a “red notice” and the Belize police had issued the warrant, Rogers said in his dismissal order (PDF).
McNamara also said she was defamed because Koehler’s firm listed her wrongful death case on a webpage for successful verdicts and cases, though there has been no liability finding or award. Rogers noted that some of the other cases on the webpage were also pending with no verdicts or settlements.
The Seattle Times describes Tracy McNamara’s lawyer, John Henry Browne, as a “celebrity defense attorney” who has represented serial killer Ted Bundy and the Barefoot Bandit. Koehler is a former president of the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association and the author of the blog The Velvet Hammer, for which she wrote a post about the decision.
