I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
A Las Cruces judge ruled today that community organizer Arturo Uribe, who was sued for defamation by the Helena Chemical company, won’t have to pay the $75,000 in damages a jury awarded back in April. The judge reduced the punitive damages to $10,000, Tracy Dingman reports at Clearly New Mexico. Uribe told Dingmann he’ll appeal the damages—if Helena doesn’t demand a new trial.
As Laura Paskus reported for The Independent in April:
In December 2008, Helena Chemical Company sued Uribe in New Mexico’s Third Judicial District Court in Las Cruces, saying he had repeatedly defamed Helena in public statements. According to the company, Uribe had harassed employees at the Mesquite branch and defamed the company via six individual slides within various presentations at community meetings, and when he told a television reporter: “We’re gonna allow companies and industry to contaminate us and knowingly do it and do nothing about it? I’m insulted; I’m hurt more than anything.”
Two months prior to Helena’s suit against him, Uribe and 22 community members had filed a lawsuit in state court alleging that the chemical company’s emissions were sickening local children. Health problems include chronic respiratory infections, asthma, severe chronic bronchitis and nosebleeds.
According to Uribe’s attorney, Linda Thomas, Helena’s suit against Uribe was filed to silence the activist. Uribe had repeatedly reported information to the New Mexico Environment Department. In turn, she said, the department had investigated the facility, found violations and levied fines against Helena. “To us, this was a clear, malicious abuse of process,” she said. “They had filed the suit to shut him up.”
“I welcome a new trial,” Uribe told Dingmann. “Look what’s happened already – they went from a $600,000 suit against my wife and my attorney to having my wife and attorney dropped and most of the case dismissed. And now the judge reduced the punitive damage from $75,000 to $10,000.”
