Wrongful firing lawsuit against Mo. gov. moved to capital

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A judge has agreed with Gov. Matt Blunt's request to switch a wrongful firing lawsuit by a former staff attorney from suburban Kansas City to the capital.

But the judge has yet to decide whether a defamation claim brought against Blunt by fired counsel Scott Eckersley also should be transferred to Jefferson City.

Eckersley sued Blunt and four past or current members of his administration in January. He claims he was fired and defamed last fall in retaliation for suggesting Blunt's administration was destroying e-mails in violation of Missouri's open-records law.

Blunt has said Eckersley was fired Sept. 28 for doing private work with state resources, among various other reasons.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Michael Manners said in an order dated Friday -- and provided Monday to The Associated Press -- that because Eckersley was fired in Jefferson City, the three wrongful termination claims in his lawsuit should be transferred to the capital's home of Cole County.

But the court venue for the defamation claim is not so clear cut, he said.

That's because as Eckersley was about to go public with his allegations in October, Blunt's administration provided an unsolicited stack of documents to The Associated Press and other media defending Eckersley's firing and casting him in a bad light. Among other things, the media packet claimed Eckersley had registered for what Blunt's administration described as a "group sex Internet site" and noted that Blunt's chief of staff had questioned whether Eckersley used illegal drugs.

Eckersley's lawsuit asserts that the information about group sex and drug use "was patently false" and intentionally "designed to injure, defame and smear" Eckersley. He said Blunt's staff had granted him permission to do the private work, which he described as minimal.

The lawsuit was filed in Jackson County because Eckersley claims the allegedly defamatory information was received by The Kansas City Star.

Given that, the judge said he was prepared to transfer the defamation claim from the Jackson County Courthouse in Independence, where the lawsuit was filed, to the county courthouse in Kansas City.

But the judge did not issue that order. He said that while writing his decision, he received additional documents from Blunt's attorneys noting that the packet of information had been hand-delivered to the Star's office in the Capitol.

What's critical, the judge said, is where the materials were read by media members. If those materials were read in Jefferson City, the defamation claim also can be transferred to Cole County, Manners said.

The judge gave attorneys on all sides until April 17 to submit additional evidence to the court on where the defamation claims should be heard.

One of Eckersley's attorneys, Jeff Bauer of Springfield, said Monday evening that his legal team still was trying to determine the right venue for the defamation claim. Besides Kansas City or Jefferson City, he said the claim could be brought in St. Louis or Greene County, because the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Springfield News-Leader also received the Blunt administration's packet of information about Eckersley.

"We're happy to have the case anywhere," Bauer said.

The governor's office on Friday requested that The Associated Press provide an affidavit or deposition about the AP's receipt of the Blunt administration's packet of documents about Eckersley.

Blunt spokeswoman Nanci Gonder declined to say whether other media members were asked to submit affidavits. She also declined to comment on the judge's decision.