Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03308/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03308-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 370
Nature of Suit: Other Fraud
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

KEVIN B. MCCARTHY, et al.,

Plaintiffs / Counterclaim Defendants-Appellees,

and

LANGSENKAMP FAMILY APOSTOLATE, et al.,

Counterdefendants-Appellees,

v.

PATRICIA ANN FULLER, et al.,

Defendants / Counterplaintiffs-Appellants. 

__________________________

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:08-cv-00994-WTL-DML — William T. Lawrence, Judge.

__________________________

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 21, 2015—DECIDED DECEMBER 18, 2015

__________________________

Before POSNER, WILLIAMS, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

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2 Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

POSNER, Circuit Judge. This suit, instituted in 2008, grows out 

of an event in Indiana in 1956: Mary Ephrem, a Catholic Sister

of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, claimed 

to have encountered a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary, 

which had told her: “I am Our Lady of America.” With support 

from the Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati an elaborate program of devotions to Our Lady of America was launched. Our 

Lady has been credited with healing sick people who appealed 

to her for a cure, although whether either the apparitions or the 

cures are authentic has not been determined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body within the Roman 

Catholic hierarchy that is responsible for making such determinations.

In the wake of the visions and the Archbishop’s support, Sister Ephrem joined with other Sisters of her Congregation in a 

contemplative cloister—a “strictly cloistered house in the Congregation” created in order “to enable Sisters with a special calling to devote their entire energies to the worship and contemplation of God.” Approved in 1963 by Pope Paul VI, the new 

cloister remained in existence until 1979.

Sister Therese (as Patricia Fuller, the principal defendant in 

this case, styled herself—we’ll explain why we call her “Fuller” 

rather than “Sister Therese”) entered the contemplative cloister 

in 1965. In 1978 or 1979 its three members (two of them being

Fuller and Sister Ephrem) formed a new congregation, which

they called the Contemplative Sisters of the Indwelling Trinity. 

And in 1993 Sister Ephrem founded Our Lady of America Center, dedicated to promoting the devotions to Our Lady. She directed the Center until her death in 2000, whereupon she was 

succeeded by Fuller.

Sister Ephrem had willed all her property to Fuller, who also 

took control of the Center and thus obtained control over all 

property that belonged to either Sister Ephrem or the Center. 

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 3

Most of the property pertained to the devotions to Our Lady of 

America and had been created by Sister Ephrem or donated to 

the Contemplative Sisters or to Our Lady of America Center. 

Fuller registered trademarks for a variety of the artifacts related 

to Our Lady of America that had been acquired by the two organizations, including documents such as Sister Ephrem’s diary

(which Sister Ephrem had copyrighted, along with a song, a 

painting, and sculpture), medallions, plaques, and a statue of 

Our Lady.

In 2005 Kevin McCarthy, a lawyer and Catholic layman, and 

Albert Langsenkamp, who claims to be a Papal Knight of the 

Holy Sepulchre, met Fuller and committed to help her promote

the devotions to Our Lady—spread the word, as it were. The 

three worked together amicably at first, and in gratitude Fuller 

gave them the statue and other artifacts of Our Lady. But in

2007 Fuller had a falling out with McCarthy and Langsenkamp

that erupted the following year into this bitter, protracted lawsuit, now in its eighth year. Langsenkamp established the

Langsenkamp Family Apostolate and McCarthy and

Langsenkamp (and the latter’s apostolate) claim to be the authentic promoters of devotions to Our Lady of America and to 

be the lawful owners of all the documents and artifacts accumulated by Fuller and Sister Ephrem.

After the breakup Paul Hartman, a retired postal inspector, 

came to Fuller’s aid by launching a campaign to smear McCarthy’s and Langsenkamp’s reputations. He emailed leaders of 

the Catholic Church denouncing McCarthy and Langsenkamp

and posted to his blog allegations of their wrongdoings. He

emailed to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago a denunciation 

of Langsenkamp and McCarthy as “two sharks from Indianapolis” who had “hijacked the devotion from Sister Joseph Therese 

[i.e., Fuller, sometimes also referred to as Sister Mary Joseph 

Therese] and Our Lady of America Center, all for their personal 

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4 Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

profit and gain.” And in a typical blog posting by Hartman we 

read that he “finds it highly unlikely that LANGSENKAMP & 

MCCARTHY were engaged in prayerful contemplation when 

they swindled an[] estimated $750,000 from Sister Mary Joseph 

Therese ... . The writer also finds it unlikely that 

LANGSENKAMP & MCCARTHY were praying as they unlawfully seized control of Sister’s website by means of a fraudulent

letter to which they forged the name and signature of Sister Joseph Therese. And, certainly, LANGSENKAMP & MCCARTHY 

were not engaged in prayer when they stole the Archival Statute [he means Statue] of Our Lady of America from Sister Joseph Therese.”

McCarthy and Langsenkamp (we can ignore the 

Langsenkamp Family Apostolate) brought this suit against 

Fuller and Hartman charging all manner of tortious conduct, 

including conversion (theft), fraud, and defamation, and also 

denying having infringed any of Fuller’s intellectual property.

Fuller and Hartman counterclaimed vigorously, accusing 

McCarthy and Langsenkamp of similar misdeeds, including 

theft of the statue, the website of Our Lady of America, and

proceeds of the sale of stock owned by Fuller worth $750,000;

infringement of copyrights and trademarks that Fuller owned 

relating to the devotions for Our Lady; and defamation of Fuller

by calling her a “fake nun.”

The jurisdiction of the federal district court, and of this court 

on appeal, rests on diversity of citizenship, and also on the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201, because McCarthy 

and Langsenkamp sought a declaration that they had not infringed trademarks and copyrights relating to Our Lady. (Those 

would have been violations of federal law, and so the district 

court had jurisdiction to issue a declaration that the defendants 

had not committed them.)

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 5

In 2011, midway in this litigation, McCarthy obtained from 

the Archbishop Secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of 

Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the branch of 

the Holy See (the central governing body of the Roman Catholic 

Church, located in the Vatican) that is responsible for the supervision of what are termed “religious Institutes,” a statement

that made clear that Fuller was no longer either a nun or a religious sister. (Nuns take solemn vows and are sequestered; that 

is, they live in monasteries. Religious sisters are not sequestered

and take simple vows but are otherwise like nuns.) The statement was that “Miss Patricia Ann Fuller is not a member of any 

religious Institute, formally recognized by the Catholic Church

and therefore must not present herself as a Sister of the Roman 

Catholic Church.”

The following year McCarthy and Langsenkamp submitted 

to the district court a statement from the Apostolic Nunciature, 

the Holy See’s diplomatic mission to the United States, confirming the authority of the archbishop’s declaration and requesting

“that the United States of America and its courts accord full 

faith and credit to” it. McCarthy asked the district judge to take 

judicial notice of (and thus defer to) the Holy See’s ruling on 

Fuller’s status with regard to the Church. His ground was that 

the federal court, being a secular body, could not reexamine the 

Holy See’s ruling but was required to accept it as authoritative.

The judge refused his request on the ground that the jury was 

the proper body to decide Fuller’s status.

That ruling precipitated an interlocutory appeal by McCarthy and Langsenkamp, an appeal that was within our appellate

jurisdiction by virtue of the collateral order doctrine. Cohen v. 

Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546–47 (1949). We 

ruled for the appellants, McCarthy v. Fuller, 714 F.3d 971 (7th 

Cir. 2013), on the ground that a secular court has no authority to

take sides on issues of religious doctrine. E.g., Hosanna-Tabor 

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6 Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 132 S. Ct. 694, 

702–07 (2012). But lest any doubt remain concerning Fuller’s 

status, we asked the Holy See while the interlocutory appeal

was pending before us to advise us of her status. It responded 

in a 51-page amicus curiae brief that analyzed the question in 

detail and concluded that since leaving the Congregation of the 

Sisters of the Precious Blood Fuller had not been a member of 

any religious organization recognized by the Holy See. She is 

not a member of the Catholic sisterhood or of any Catholic religious order (which is why we refer to her as Fuller rather than

as Sister Therese or Sister Mary Joseph Therese).

The Holy See’s ruling removed the issue of Fuller’s status in 

the Catholic Church from the litigation. We therefore resolved 

the interlocutory appeal by ordering the district court to take

judicial notice of the Holy See’s ruling and not allow the jury to 

opine on whether Fuller is a nun or a religious sister; she has 

authoritatively been determined to be neither.

And so the case returned to the district court, which conducted a jury trial that resulted in a verdict in favor of McCarthy and Langsenkamp and against Fuller and Hartman. The 

plaintiffs were awarded $150,000 in compensatory damages 

and $200,000 in punitive damages, to be paid, however, just by 

Hartman because he’d been the principal author of the defamatory statements. The punitive damages award was much smaller than the $1 million that the jury had wanted to award—the 

court reduced the amount because Indiana prohibits an award 

of punitive damages that exceeds thrice the compensatory 

damages awarded. Ind. Code § 34-51-3-4. The jury had awarded 

Langsenkamp $1,000,000 in punitive damages but only $50,000 

in compensatory damages. The judge therefore reduced 

Langsenkamp’s award of punitive damages to $150,000. McCarthy was awarded $100,000 in compensatory damages and

$50,000 in punitive damages. The judge also awarded the plainCase: 14-3308 Document: 131 Filed: 12/18/2015 Pages: 20
Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 7

tiffs some $295,000 in attorney’s fees and sanctions and $281,000 

in costs, with these items to be paid by Fuller, Hartman, and 

their lawyer.

The conduct of the litigation in the district court by the lawyer representing Fuller and Hartman showed, as the district 

judge explained in granting the request for attorney’s fees, a serious and studied disregard for the orderly processes of justice. 

That disregard has persisted on appeal. Many of the grounds on 

which Fuller and Hartman seek reversal were waived, are frivolous, or are incomplete, with the important exception of the 

permanent injunction entered by the district judge, to which we 

devote the balance of this opinion.

The focus of the injunction was the defamation claims, and 

its terms were drawn mainly from the following jury instruction:

The Plaintiffs claim that the following statements were 

made by the Defendants and were defamatory:

1. McCarthy, an attorney in good standing, suggested that 

Jim Whitta’s name be forged on a quit claim deed.

2. The Plaintiffs bribed various members of the Clergy.

3. McCarthy physically threatened Fuller.

4. The plaintiffs stole the Latrobe Statue, the Crucifix, the 

Plaque, and the Medallions.

5. Langsenkamp stole the websites ourladyofamerica.com 

and ourladyofamerica.org.

6. The Plaintiffs stole $750,000 in proceeds from Fuller’s Key 

Bank Stock.

7. Langsenkamp was involved in a car chase in which he 

chased Fuller around Fostoria.

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8. The Plaintiffs used the name “Ron Norton” in an inflammatory e-mail exchange that was first published by Hartman 

on his website, ourladyofamerica.blospot.com.

9. McCarthy, without the knowledge or consent of Fuller, 

caused a will to be drafted for Fuller in which she left the Devotion to McCarthy.

But the jury was not asked which of these statements had 

been made by the defendants and, of those statements, which 

were defamatory. All it was asked to find and all it did find was 

that the defendants had defamed the plaintiffs and should be 

ordered to pay damages. The district judge awarded damages, 

as we have described, and a permanent injunction.

The permanent injunction states:

It is hereby ordered, adjudged and decreed that Defendants Fuller and Hartman ... are hereby permanently enjoined 

from publishing the following statements, as well as any similar statements that contain the same sorts of allegations or inferences, in any manner or forum:

Defendants’ statements that[:]

McCarthy suggested that Jim Whitta’s name be forged on a 

quit claim deed;

Plaintiffs bribed various members of the Clergy (including 

Catholic Priests, Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals and Popes);

McCarthy physically threatened Fuller or otherwise committed any wrongful act against Fuller;

Plaintiffs are con-men, crooks, forgers, thieves, racketeers, or 

otherwise stole or converted property from Fuller or engaged 

in any conspiracy against Fuller with any Catholic clergy, 

lawyer (canon or civil) or investigator, or any Catholic lay person promoting the devotion;

Plaintiffs stole any statue (including the Latrobe statue), crucifix, plaque, medallions, pins, gold coinage, website (including 

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 9

the ourladyofamerica.com and ourladyofamerica.org websites) and/or proceeds from Fuller’s Key Bank Stock;

Langsenkamp was involved in a car chase in which he chased 

Fuller around Fostoria;

Plaintiffs used the name “Ron Norton” in an inflammatory email exchange that was first published by Hartman at his 

website, ourladyofamerica.blogspot.com; and

McCarthy, without the knowledge or consent of Fuller, caused

a will to be drafted for Fuller in which she left the Devotion to 

McCarthy.

It is further ordered, adjudged and decreed that Defendant 

Hartman is hereby ordered to take down the website operated 

by Hartman at ourladyofamerica.blogspot.com... .

We’ll defer for a moment the question, fiercely debated by 

the adversaries, whether it is ever proper to enjoin speech, and 

consider first some particulars of the injunction. One is that

since the jury didn’t indicate specifically which accusations in 

the jury instruction it found to be defamatory and to have been

made by the defendants, the judge had no basis in the jury’s 

verdict for issuing an injunction that tracked the instruction. 

Nor had he, without making his own factual determinations,

authority to enjoin defamatory statements that the jury had not 

been asked to consider in deciding on its verdict. For example, 

the judge enjoined Fuller and Hartman from stating that 

“McCarthy physically threatened Fuller,” a defamatory statement alleged in one of the jury instructions but not mentioned 

in the jury’s verdict. Also on his own the judge enjoined Fuller 

and Hartman from saying that the plaintiffs had “committed 

any wrongful act against Fuller,” a proposition that the jury had 

not even been asked to consider, and from calling the plaintiffs

“con-men, crooks, forgers, thieves, racketeers, or [saying that 

they] otherwise stole or converted property from Fuller or engaged in any conspiracy against Fuller with any Catholic clergy, 

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10 Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

lawyer (canon or civil) or investigator, or any Catholic lay person promoting the devotion.” Those charges, too, had not appeared in the instruction.

The injunction’s preamble, moreover, greatly expanded the 

scope of the injunction by prohibiting “any similar statements 

[that is, similar to the injunction’s specific prohibitions] that 

contain the same sorts of allegations or inferences, in any manner or forum,” as those listed in the body of the injunction. That 

expansion was improper. An injunction must be specific about 

the acts that it prohibits. Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d)(1). How could 

such vague terms as “similar” and “same sorts” provide guidance to the scope of the injunction? The injunction also ordered 

Hartman to take down his website, without the judge’s having 

made a finding that everything published on the website defamed McCarthy or Langsenkamp (or both).

Had Fuller and Hartman made a timely objection to the entry of the injunction on the ground that the jury had not indicated what defamatory statements it found the defendants to 

have made, or on the ground that the judge should not have 

added to the injunction prohibitions not proposed in the jury 

instruction, or on the ground of the sheer indefiniteness of the 

injunction, we would vacate it without further ado. Fuller and

Hartman missed the deadline for responding to McCarthy’s 

motion for a permanent injunction, however, and ordinarily 

such a miss would have justified the judge’s rejecting any objection to the injunction as untimely. But the injunction in this case

had the potential to harm nonparties to the litigation because 

enjoining speech harms listeners as well as speakers. As this 

same district judge noted in a previous case, “while Local Rule 

7.1 does, as the Defendants note, provide that the ‘[f]ailure to 

file a response or reply within the time prescribed may subject 

the motion to summary ruling,’ the Court will not summarily 

grant a motion where, as here, it is apparent from the face of the 

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 11

motion in question that the movant is not entitled to the relief 

sought.” Niswander v. Price, Waicukauski & Riley LLC, No. 1:08-

cv-1325-WTL-DML, 2010 WL 3718864, at *3 (S.D. Ind. Sept. 10, 

2010); cf. Wienco, Inc. v. Katahn Associates, Inc., 965 F.2d 565, 568 

(7th Cir. 1992) (a “motion for summary judgment cannot be 

granted simply because there is no opposition”). The judge was 

obligated to consider the public interest despite the waiver of 

the parties.

The Bill of Rights speaks with its characteristic brevity in 

prohibiting in the First Amendment “abridging the freedom of 

speech” and the Supreme Court has interpreted the prohibition

to forbid among other things “prior restraints,” although there 

are exceptions such as where national security could be endangered by the speech sought to be enjoined. See Organization for a 

Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U.S. 415, 419–20 (1971); Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 713–23 (1931). ”Prior restraint” is

just a fancy term for censorship, which means prohibiting

speech before the speech is uttered or otherwise disseminated.

This has led to a belief in some quarters that defamation, which 

is a type of speech, can never be enjoined. The problem with 

such a rule is that it would make an impecunious defamer undeterrable. See Balboa Island Village Inn, Inc. v. Lemen, 156 P.3d 

339, 351 (Cal. 2007). He would continue defaming the plaintiff, 

who after discovering that the defamer was judgment proof 

would cease suing, as he would have nothing to gain from the 

suit, even if he won a judgment. It is beyond unlikely that Fuller 

and Hartman can pay what the judge has ordered them to pay 

the plaintiffs. They will be broke, and if defamation can never

be enjoined, they will be free to repeat all their defamatory 

statements with impunity. McCarthy and Langsenkamp will 

have no remedy except to sue for damages and obtain another 

money judgment that they won’t be able to collect.

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12 Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

We note in this regard Judge Wellford’s opinion in Lothschuetz v. Carpenter, 898 F.2d 1200 (6th Cir. 1990), which announced the court’s holding on whether to grant an injunction

against defamatory statements. He said he’d “grant a narrow 

and limited injunction to prohibit [the defendant] from continuing and reiterating the same libelous and defamatory charges 

he and his company have made against [the plaintiff]. ... [A]n 

injunction is necessary to prevent future injury to [the plaintiff’s] personal reputation and business relations. I, however, 

would limit the application of such injunction to the statements 

which have been found in this and prior proceedings to be false

and libelous.” Id. at 1208–09 (internal citations omitted). Most 

courts would agree with Judge Wellford that defamatory 

statements can be enjoined—see cases cited in Balboa Island Village Inn, Inc. v. Lemen, supra, 156 P.3d at 347–49—provided that 

the injunction is no “broader than necessary to provide relief to 

plaintiff while minimizing the restriction of expression.” Id. at 

352. The Supreme Court, however, has not yet addressed the 

issue, though it has permitted injunctions preventing other 

types of scurrilous speech. See, e.g., Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, 413 U.S. 376, 389–91 

(1973) (upholding an order prohibiting advertisements found to 

constitute gender-based discrimination); Kingsley Books, Inc. v. 

Brown, 354 U.S. 436, 441–45 (1957) (upholding an injunction that 

prohibited distributing materials found to be obscene).

But this is not a case in which we have to decide whether 

defamation can ever be enjoined because, even if it can be, the 

injunction issued by the district judge cannot be sustained. An 

injunction against defamatory statements, if permissible at all,

must not through careless drafting forbid statements not yet determined to be defamatory, for by doing so it could restrict lawful expression. The injunction that the district judge issued in 

this case was of that character, owing to its inclusion of vague, 

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 13

open-ended provisions for which there is no support in the jury 

verdict or, so far as appears, in the district judge’s own evaluation of the evidence. We have no jury findings as to which 

statements were defamatory, and the plaintiffs didn't even ask 

the judge to address that absence, so he didn’t. As illustrative of 

the injunction’s resulting excessive breadth, notice that it orders

Hartman to take down his website, which would prevent him

from posting any nondefamatory messages on his blog; it 

would thus enjoin lawful speech.

An injunction against speech harms not just the speakers but 

also the listeners (in this case the viewers and readers). “[T]he 

First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the 

self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.” First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 

765, 783 (1978); see also Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 

U.S. 367, 390 (1969); Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969)

(“the Constitution protects the right to receive information and 

ideas”). The injunction in this case is so broad and vague that it 

threatens to silence Fuller and Hartman completely.

So what to do? As we said, the jury found defamation without indicating which charges of defamation, of the nine listed in 

the jury instruction, they believed had been proved. The judge 

could have based the injunction on his own assessment of the 

evidence, since the issuance of an injunction is the responsibility 

of the trial judge rather than of the jury. But he didn’t do that; 

he accepted the plaintiffs’ formulation of the injunction without 

considering the defendants’ response, because it was untimely, 

even though the preamble to the injunction was a patent violation of the First Amendment.

To conclude, we affirm the entire judgment except the injunction, which we vacate, leaving it to the district judge to decide in the first instance whether to issue a new injunction, one 

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14 Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

consistent with the criticisms in this opinion of the injunction he 

issued.

AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART,

AND REMANDED WITH INSTRUCTIONS

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 15

SYKES, Circuit Judge, concurring. The only serious issue remaining in this long-running case is the propriety of the permanent injunction entered by the district court as an additional form of relief on the jury’s verdict, which found the defendants liable for defamation and awarded damages. The injunction is deeply flawed for all the reasons described by my 

colleagues: (1) the jury was not asked to identify which of nine 

possible statements were false and defamatory, so we have no

findings to support the specificity requirement for a proper

injunction, see FED. R. CIV. P. 65(d)(1); (2) the enjoined statements do not even correspond to the statements the plaintiffs 

claimed were defamatory; and (3) the injunction is hopelessly 

vague and overbroad. It plainly cannot stand.

Unlike my colleagues, however, I would not give the judge 

an opportunity to correct these errors and try to fashion a narrower injunction on remand. The jury’s verdict is too general 

to support injunctive relief. As the proponents of this remedy, 

the plaintiffs had the responsibility to propose a special-verdict form that asked the jury to make “statement specific” defamation findings. They did not do so. Accordingly, we have 

no idea which specific statements the jury found to be false 

and defamatory; we have only the equivalent of a general verdict that the defendants are liable for defamation. That kind 

of verdict doesn’t contain the necessary factual findings to 

support the issuance of a permanent injunction. 

It’s true, as my colleagues note, that the issuance of an injunction is the responsibility of the trial judge, not the jury. See 

Majority Op. at 13. Assuming for argument’s sake that the trial 

judge has the authority to make the missing factual findings 

himself, I wouldn’t allow that opportunity now. The plaintiffs 

never asked the judge to address this problem either before or 

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after the jury returned its verdict. Nor have they asked us for 

a remand to allow the judge to fill the gaps. I see no reason to 

order this remedy sua sponte.

More fundamentally, the question whether an injunction 

is permissible at all in this context is a sensitive and difficult 

matter of First Amendment law. A court order permanently 

enjoining future speech is a prior restraint and as such is presumptively unconstitutional. Any prior restraint comes to us 

“bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity,” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 70 (1963), and 

“permanent injunctions—i.e., court orders that actually forbid 

speech activities—are classic examples of prior restraints” because they impose a “true restraint on future speech,” Alexander v. United States, 509 U.S. 544, 550 (1993). As the Supreme 

Court explained in its seminal case condemning prior restraints, an injunction against future speech—making any 

publication of the suppressed speech punishable as contempt—is “the essence of censorship.” Near v. Minnesota ex rel. 

Olson, 283 U.S. 697, 713 (1931).

Consistent with this bedrock free-speech principle, the traditional rule in defamation law is that “equity does not enjoin 

a libel or slander[;] ... the only remedy for defamation is an 

action for damages.” e360 Insight v. The Spamhaus Project, 500 

F.3d 594, 606 (7th Cir. 2007) (quotation marks omitted); see also 

Metro. Opera Ass’n, Inc. v. Local 100, Hotel Emps. & Rest. Emps. 

Int’l Union, 239 F.3d 172, 177 (2d Cir. 2001); Kramer v. Thompson, 947 F.2d 666, 677 (3d Cir. 1991); Comm. for Creative NonViolence v. Pierce, 814 F.2d 663, 672 (D.C. Cir. 1987). This rule 

“has enjoyed nearly two centuries of widespread acceptance 

at common law.” Kramer, 947 F.2d at 677; see also Erwin 

Chemerinsky, Injunctions in Defamation Cases, 57 SYRACUSE L.

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 17

REV. 157, 167–68 (2007); Michael I. Myerson, The Neglected History of the Prior Restraint Doctrine: Rediscovering the Link Between the First Amendment and the Separation of Powers, 34 IND.

L. REV. 295, 308–22 (2001).

The Supreme Court has not yet directly addressed 

whether injunctive relief is a constitutionally permissible remedy for defamation, but the general equitable rule accords 

with the Court’s prior-restraint jurisprudence dating back to

Near, which invalidated a Minnesota statute that permitted

the issuance of temporary and permanent injunctions against 

persons and organizations engaged in the publication of defamatory newspapers, magazines, or other periodicals. 283 

U.S. at 702, 723; see id. at 712 (“[S]uppression is accomplished 

by enjoining publication, and that restraint is the object and 

effect of the statute.”).

An emerging modern trend, however, acknowledges the 

general rule but allows for the possibility of narrowly tailored 

permanent injunctive relief as a remedy for defamation as 

long as the injunction prohibits only the repetition of the specific statements found at trial to be false and defamatory. See 

Hill v. Petrotech Res. Corp., 325 S.W.3d 302, 308–09 (Ky. 2010); 

Balboa Island Vill. Inn, Inc. v. Lemen, 156 P.3d 339, 347–49 (Cal. 

2007); Sid Dillon Chevrolet v. Sullivan, 559 N.W.2d 740, 746–47 

(Neb. 1997); Advanced Training Sys., Inc. v. Caswell Equip. Co., 

352 N.W.2d 1, 11 (Minn. 1984); Retail Credit Co. v. Russell, 218 

S.E.2d 54, 62–63 (Ga. 1975); O’Brien v. Univ. Cmty. Tenants Union, Inc., 327 N.E.2d 753, 755 (Ohio 1975); see also Lothschuetz v. 

Carpenter, 898 F.2d 1200, 1208–09 (6th Cir. 1990) (Wellford, J., 

concurring in part and dissenting in part); id. (Hull, J., joining 

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18 Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839

pear to draw general lessons from the Supreme Court’s decisions in Pittsburgh Press Co. v Pittsburgh Commission on Human 

Relations, 413 U.S. 376, 389–91 (1973), and Kingsley Books, Inc. 

v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436, 441–45 (1957). I’m not sure I agree with 

this modern trend.

Pittsburgh Press upheld an order prohibiting a newspaper 

from organizing its classified advertising section in a way that 

allowed employment ads to discriminate on the basis of sex—

for example, by having separate columns for “Male Help 

Wanted” and “Female Help Wanted.” 413 U.S. at 379–80. In

Kingsley Books the Court upheld an injunction prohibiting the 

distribution of a particular booklet found to be obscene after 

a full trial. 354 U.S. at 445.

Pittsburgh Press and Kingsley Books arose in distinctive settings that make it difficult to map their holdings onto defamation law. Perhaps most notably, Pittsburgh Press did not address an injunction at all, but instead involved a regulatory 

order issued by a municipal commission that lacked the 

power to punish by contempt. 413 U.S. at 390 n.14. And the 

type of speech at issue in Kingsley—an obscene booklet—suggests to me that some caution is in order before trying to extrapolate a general rule. Defamation is materially different

from obscenity. There’s a meaningful distinction between enjoining the distribution of a particular pamphlet once it’s been 

found to be obscene and enjoining a person in perpetuity from 

uttering particular words and phrases. Defamation by its nature is highly contextual. A statement that is defamatory in 

one circumstance, time, or place might not be defamatory in 

another circumstance, time, or place. A permanent injunction

as a remedy for defamation does not account for constantly 

changing contextual factors that affect whether the speech is 

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Nos. 14-3308, 15-1839 19

punishable or protected. If factual circumstances change in a 

way that affects the defamation calculus, the person enjoined 

must risk contempt or seek the court’s permission to speak. 

As the Court said emphatically in Near, “[t]his is the essence 

of censorship.” 283 U.S. at 713.

The emerging trend, moreover, is far from an inexorable

movement toward a new doctrine. In a thoughtful opinion, 

the Third Circuit predicted that the Pennsylvania Supreme 

Court would not relax the general rule that equity will not enjoin a libel. Kramer, 947 F.2d at 677–79. Similarly, the Texas Supreme Court has recently held, also in a thorough and 

thoughtful opinion, that a permanent injunction as a remedy 

in a defamation case is an impermissible prior restraint on 

speech. See Kinney v. Barnes, 443 S.W.3d 87, 94–99 (Tex. 2014). 

Kinney was decided as a matter of state constitutional law, but 

the court noted that the state constitution’s free-speech guarantee is governed by First Amendment standards, at least on 

this particular question. Id. at 91–92 (“We know of nothing to 

suggest that injunctions restricting speech should be judged 

by a different standard under the state constitution than the 

First Amendment.”) (quotation marks omitted).

Finally, in 2004 the Supreme Court granted certiorari in 

Tory v. Cochran to decide whether a permanent injunction is a 

constitutionally permissible remedy in a defamation case, “at 

least when the plaintiff is a public figure.” 544 U.S. 734, 736, 

737 (2005). But the Court never reached the merits. The plaintiff died after the case was orally argued, so the Court summarily vacated the injunction, which had “lost its underlying 

rationale.” Id. at 737–38.

In short, the question whether the First Amendment forbids the issuance of a permanent injunction in a defamation 

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case is an important one and far from settled. By offering the 

district court an opportunity to craft a new injunction, my colleagues imply that such a remedy is constitutionally permissible—indeed appropriate in cases of judgment-proof defamers who might not be deterred by a damages award. See Majority Op. at 11–12. I cannot join this part of the court’s opinion. At the very least, it wrongly implies that a core liberty 

secured by the First Amendment—the right to be free from 

prior restraints on speech—does not protect people who lack 

the means to pay a judgment.

For my part, I see no need to decide the constitutional 

question now. The injunction is fatally flawed for the other 

reasons identified by my colleagues, and as explained above,

I would not allow the plaintiffs and the court to try again.

Accordingly, I join the court’s opinion affirming on all issues except the injunction. I also join the decision to vacate the 

injunction. But my agreement stops there. I would remand 

with narrower instructions: The district court should simply 

issue an amended judgment without the flawed injunction.

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