Walker wins massive defamation award in lawsuit against Bangstad

News analysis

As stunning in scope as the verdict last week was against Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad — a jury unanimously awarded Lakeland Times publisher Gregg Walker $750,000, more than his attorney had asked for in defamation claims against Bangstad — it did not exceed other courtroom surprises, specifically the behavior of Bangstad himself.

In the trial, a jury of nine women and four men awarded Walker one of the largest defamation awards in the history of the state — if not the largest. 

The jury unanimously found that Bangstad defamed Walker by repeatedly and falsely referring to him as a misogynist and crook, by falsely claiming that Walker contributed to his brother’s death in a hunting accident 36 years ago and abused his elderly father, and that the newspaper called Minocqua chamber of commerce executive director Krystal Westfahl an egregious slur related to cognitive disorders. The jury found all the claims to be false — Bangstad himself acknowledged as much on the claim surrounding Walker’s brother’s death — and awarded Walker $40,000 each on the “misogynist,” “crook,” and Westfahl defamations; $200,000 on the claims surrounding his brother and father; and the jury further awarded Walker $430,000 in punitive damages on the latter claims, determining that Bangstad acted with express malice.

While Bangstad’s conduct in posting on Facebook about Walker was the focus of the legal proceedings last week, his courtroom antics were never far from center stage, either, though mostly they took place outside of the jury’s presence.

However, that doesn’t mean the jury didn’t experience the tone and tenor of Bangstad’s hostility to the proceedings and the court — he flashed those in his testimony, especially when questioned by Walker’s attorney, Matthew Fernholz.

In his closing statement, Fernholz first called attention to the malicious intent behind Bangstad’s Facebook postings, and his malicious intent, he told the jury, was the reason the jurors should award Walker punitive damages.

“Now the next question you have to answer deals with express malice and the reason that’s in there is ... punitive damages,” Fernholz told the jury. “Punitive damages are meant to punish for bad behavior and that’s what I’m asking you, it’s time to punish Kirk Bangstad for what he has done. Now the standard for express malice for a defamation claim is this — ... the person who made the posting shows ill will, bad intent, envy, spite, hatred, revenge or other bad motive.” Bangstad’s conduct underscored that maliciousness, Fernholz told the jury, as Bangstad had appealed to his followers to contact Lakeland Times advertisers and subscribers and to tell them to stop advertising and subscribing to The Lakeland Times.

“He says he wants the paper to go out of business,” Fernholz told the jury. “He describes it [the newspaper] as evil.”

Fernholz told the jurors that many of them may have been wondering about Bangstad’s behavior at trial, and Fernholz said it was indeed the worst he had ever seen in a courtroom.

“I’ve never seen a witness behave in a trial like this before,” he said. “It’s obvious that he despises the law. You know that he disparaged me as well, and that’s fine, but he’s disparaged this court. He mocks the judge and he doesn’t know his name. He mocks him, as you saw, on social media as a backwoods judge and part of the old boys network and he says [the judge] doesn’t know anything about defamation law.”

Initially, Bangstad’s posts about judge Leon Stenz had been considered prejudicial and weren’t allowed to be disclosed to the jury, but that door opened when Bangstad testified about The Times’s criticism of former Oneida County judge Mary Roth Burns. On the stand, Bangstad said The Times’s criticism of a sitting judge was inappropriate.

But in his own posts Bangstad had labeled Stenz “backwoods,” among other characterizations, by which he said he meant that either Stenz did not have enough experience to conduct a defamation trial or was part of a good-old-boy’s club sitting around in back rooms smoking cigars.

At other points in the trial Bangstad referred to Fernholz and his law firm as “shills for the Republican Party” and accused Fernholz of working for Republican Assembly speaker Robin Vos.

Bangstad also suggested Stenz was bending to political pressure and tilting the trial against Bangstad when Bangstad opined that because the Northwoods — including Forest County, where Stenz presides — was heavily Republican, Stenz was likely beholden to Republican Party interests.

On the final morning of the trial — while the jury was not present — Bangstad showed up wearing a hat, which Stenz ordered removed. Bangstad asked why he should have to; Stenz said because he had told him to and because to remove the hat would show respect for the court.

Bangstad did remove the hat but not before wondering aloud why — after the week he said he had just been through — he should respect the court.

In his closing, Fernholz said that contemptuous attitude, was, in a nutshell, why everyone was in court last week. “He doesn’t respect you,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, the way he behaved in trial this week shows complete lack of respect for the legal process.”

Contempt of court

All through the week, Bangstad tangled with the judge, and early on that earned him a contempt of court citation and a $250 dollar fine.

The contempt citation followed Bangstad’s taunting of this reporter and of Walker in the courtroom, though not in the presence of the jury. The judge instructed Bangstad at that point to speak only to his attorneys, but soon thereafter Bangstad resumed his taunting, this time of Walker’s counsel while the judge was out of the courtroom on a sidebar with attorneys. Fernholz said not following the court’s order was prejudicial. He asked for the contempt finding but said Bangstad deserved more than that.

“Judge, I have zero confidence that Mr. Bangstad will follow the court’s direction,” Fernholz told the judge. “His goal is to get a mistrial. He needs to be removed from the courtroom.” Fernholz asked that Bangstad be jailed and his participation in the trial limited to Zoom from a cell.

Stenz rejected that request, but he did observe that he needed to preserve the integrity of the court’s proceedings and he said Bangstad was directly attempting to frustrate the proceedings of the trial.

“He criticized counsel,” Stenz said. “He criticized the plaintiff. I don’t find him to be credible. I find him in contempt for attempting to frustrate and delay the trial.”

Stenz directed that Bangstad accompany the judge and attorneys out of the court for legal sidebars because Bangstad could not be trusted without supervision.

The contempt citation did not quell Bangstad’s criticism of the court system, however.

“I do believe this is a political issue,” Bangstad said, adding that he didn’t believe the trial was a good use of the justice system. 

He described himself as a “loosey-goosey” guy who runs a brewery.

On the stand, Bangstad berated the Northwards political leadership, often using his testimony as a political soapbox. The Northwoods, he said, was “plagued by an old boys network,” and “sometimes you have to rattle the cage.”

Under cross-examination, Bangstad turned up the tenor of the attacks, giving the jury a glimpse of his off-the-record conduct, offering harsh judgments of the state and its residents; among other things, he said Wisconsin is “kind of a backward state right now.”

However, Bangstad said he aimed to tell the truth, and that he was highly sensitive to political statements he considered dishonest.

“The truth is something I always aim to hit, and [publishing] things that are outright lies potentially affect me more than it does other people,” Bangstad said, describing his political passions.

Bangstad said that what he writes varies by the day.

“Sometimes it’s what is happening in the state of Wisconsin, and sometimes I want to ask for money and other times I want to change people’s opinions and help to make Wisconsin a better place,” he said.

In so doing, Bangstad continued, his language sometimes takes a sharp turn.

“The language can appear sharp and rude,” he said. “It can appear that it lacks civility. I’ve apologized frequently.”

When he’s proven wrong, Bangstad said, he retracts it immediately. But Bangstad said he would not retract his calling Walker a crook.

“My definition of crook is dishonest,” he said, and he insisted he had not changed his mind. “He is a crook. Even if you find me guilty because I called him a crook, so be it, because he is a crook.”

Bangstad said Walker and the newspaper had been dishonest about “the science” of climate change and Covid, among other things.

Later, however, Bangstad appeared to impeach his own testimony that his definition of crook was a person who was dishonest. Bangstad himself testified that, after receiving an email expressing an opinion that Walker was a criminal but with no evidence that Walker was a criminal, Bangstad said he intended his use of the word thereafter to mean both dishonest and criminal.

He never followed up with the email writer to find out why that writer offered that opinion. “And he said, ‘well that [email] just confirmed to me that he was a criminal and would do criminal things and that he was a crook,’” Fernholz told the jurors about Bangstad. “He never met this woman, never heard of her, never spoken with her, never followed up on the email. Mr. Bangstad says, ‘I have this email. Now I know he’s a crook’ and Mr. Bangstad testified that every time he used that word after the date of that email, he meant to imply Gregg Walker was a criminal.”

In his testimony, Bangstad berated The Times for criticizing the actions of three women in Oneida County leadership positions — Oneida County public health director Linda Conlon, former Oneida County judge Mary Roth Burns, and new Oneida County district attorney Jillian Pfeifer, as well as Minocqua chamber executive director Krystal Westfahl.

“It’s easier to pick on women that it is to pick on men,” Bangstad said.

But Westfahl testified that she had a good partnership with The Times and a great relationship with Walker, and Walker, on redirect, observed that the criticisms all dealt with policy disagreements, and that The Times routinely offers criticism of men in leadership positions. Specifically, Walker cited the newspaper’s criticism of Pfeifer’s predecessor as district attorney, Michael Schiek, whom the newspaper criticized for not pursuing prosecutions of men accused of rape in two separate cases, after the women approached the newspaper and handed over their records.

Brother’s death

Fernholz said the most disgusting conduct from Bangstad came in allegations in an August 8, 2022 post, that somehow Walker contributed to his brother’s death — Brad Walker died in a hunting accident 36 years ago — to inherit the newspaper and then abused his elderly father who suffered from dementia.

Multiple witnesses testified that Walker, then in high school, was nowhere near the accident scene when the accident occurred.

Fernholz recounted the testimony of a man Bangstad had described as the source of the allegation about Walker’s brother, but that person denied on the stand ever saying or suggesting anything of the sort.

“Then Mr. Bangstad takes [his comments] and he twists it, too,” Fernholz said in his closing. “Well somehow Gregg Walker then contributed to Brad’s death so he could inherit the paper, a sick and twisted way to distort what [the witness] actually told him. Who could have imagined that in 1987 when this community was hit with the tragic death of Brad Walker, that in the year 2023 you would be sitting in a courtroom having to prove that Gregg Walker did not contribute to his brother’s death or that Brad’s and Gregg’s mother at the age of 83 was going to have to sit on that witness stand and testify under oath about the facts of her own son’s death?”

All that was yet another side effect of Bangstad’s revolting behavior, Fernholz told the jury. “Gregg Walker said it best,” he said. “Brad Walker deserves to rest in peace, but now because of Mr. Bangstad’s vicious intent, Brad Walker’s death is going to be forever linked to this trial. Don’t let Mr. Bangstad have the last say on Brad Walker’s legacy.”

Fernholz reminded the jury that Bangstad had shown absolutely no remorse for his behavior, posting a mocking “apology” that declared that “we don’t think you’re as big of a crook as we did before.”

“This is how you say sorry to someone for making this horrific allegation? And let’s remember the other revolting aspect of this post,” he said. of the Aug. 8 post. “Mr. Bangstad said Gregg Walker abused his own father when he had dementia so he could direct more money out his will for himself and then Gregg Walker kept his father’s second wife away from him.”

Fernholz reminded the jury that he had stressed in his opening statement that they listen carefully to testimony from people who actually knew what happened in Don Walker’s [Gregg Walker’s father] final years.

“And what did you hear?” he said. “You heard from Gregg Walker and his wife at the time, Kim Drake, that they took care of Don, they stepped up and they were the primary caregivers of Don as he was suffering through dementia.”

The jury heard from John Hogan, an attorney for 40 years and a court commissioner in Oneida County, Fernholz reminded the jury.

“He gave the full story of what happened during Don Walker’s final years,” he said. “Far from being the villain, Gregg Walker was the hero. He’s the one who stepped up and protected his father from [Don Walker’s ex-wife], who was suing to get half of Don Walker’s estate. And by the way, did you remember what happened after attorney Hogan testified? Nothing. Attorney Johnson [Bangstad’s attorney] did not ask a single question of him.”

And what should the jury take from that fact? Fernholz asked.

“Mr. Bangstad had nothing to substantiate that claim,” he said.

And there was one more thing underscoring Bangstad’s revolting behavior, Fernholz argued. “That August 8th post was one of the most disgusting things that I have ever seen in my career and it is still up on the Minocqua Brewing Company Facebook page,” he said. “It has not been taken down. Now is the time.”

Lastly, as Fernholz pointed out during the trial, much to the judge’s chagrin, Bangstad posted on Facebook during the trial, prompting comments from followers, some of which expressed potential threats to Walker.

One comment, signed by someone calling themself Callie Lynn, states: “That newspaper owner tRumpster [sic] FOOL needs to be cut off at the knees!”

That the jury agreed with the depictions of Bangstad’s conduct reverberated not only in the verdict, which was decided unanimously by 13 jurors, but in a request afterwards by the jurors to have their names and addresses sealed, after jurors expressed their desire not to have Bangstad know their identities and locations.

The judge granted the request.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.