Kinney v. Barnes (Opinion)
Annotate this CasePetitioner worked for a BCG Attorney Search, Inc. until he left and started a competing firm. BCG’s president, Andrew Barnes, posted a statement on two of his websites implicating Petitioner in a kickback scheme during his employment with BCG. Petitioner sued BDG, Barnes, two of Barnes’s companies for defamation, seeking a permanent injunction requiring Barnes to remove from his websites the defamatory speech and prohibiting Barnes from making similar statements, in any form, in the future. The trial court granted summary judgment for Barnes, concluding that the relief Petitioner sought would constitute an impermissible prior restraint on speech under the Texas Constitution. The court of appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) a permanent injunction requiring the removal of posted speech that has been adjudicated defamatory is not a prior restraint; (2) a permanent injunction prohibiting future speech based on that adjudication is an unconstitutional infringement on Texans’ free-speech rights under the Texas Constitution; and (3) the trial court erred in granting summary judgment to the extent Petitioner’s requested injunction did not constitute a prior restraint,