Two Flagler Beach Residents Prevail Over Veranda Bay’s Parent Company, Ending 5-Year-Old Defamation Suit

Sunbelt Land Management, the company affiliated with the Veranda Bay development on John Anderson Highway, has lost a defamation suit the company filed in 2020 against two Flagler Beach residents who spoke up about its land-clearing practices. Circuit Judge Chris France, in a strong opinion in defense of expression on public issues free of intimidation, granted the two residents’ motion for summary judgment last week.




Sunbelt, which the court identifies interchangeably with all its holdings, including Veranda Bay (or The Gardens, as it was previously known), in February 2020 sued Ken Bryan and “Jane Doe,” accusing both of defaming the company by telling an audience of 100 people at a November 2019 meeting that the company clear-cut land it developed in St. Johns County, implying that it would do likewise locally. The meeting was hosted by members of Preserve Flagler Beach and Bulow Creek, a non-profit largely opposed to The Gardens/Veranda Bay.

The suit was eventually amended to name Sallee Arnoff as “Jane Doe,” but almost three years after the meeting–and almost a year after the statute of limitation had run out. On that basis alone, the judge could have granted summary judgment in favor of Arnoff. But he did so as equally and forcefully on three counts for both Arnoff and Bryan, systematically rejecting the company’s arguments in a ruling that stressed the importance of public engagement without fear of retaliation while narrowly defining the parameters that would allow a defamation suit to proceed. Sunbelt did not come close to meeting those parameters. .

Sunbelt was never defamed, the judge found. Arnoff and Bryan held no ill will or malice toward it. Their claim that Sunbelt was involved in “clear-cutting” was “substantially true.” And their statements at the public meeting were constitutionally protected expression–and opinion–in a public controversy in which Sunbelt was involved and had invited public participation, making statements about it that much more constitutionally protected.




Bryan would go on to win election to the Flagler Beach City Commission, where he served one term, warming up to Veranda Bay’s plans but all the while fighting the lawsuit even as he went back into retirement.

Michael Chiumento, the Palm Coast attorney representing Sunbelt, had said in 2019 that the lawsuit had nothing to do with intimidating Bryan or other opponents of The Gardens/Veranda Bay into silence. John Tanner, the former state attorney and a member of Preserve Flagler Beach and Bulow Creek who was also the group’s attorney, disagreed, seeing the lawsuit as a “slapp” suit–a strategic lawsuit against public participation, intended precisely to intimidate or silence opposition. The court agreed. The lawsuit “is the type of litigation that Florida’s Anti-SLAPP statute sought to prohibit,” France ruled.

Tanner and Preserve Flagler Beach were themselves sued by a Sunbelt affiliate after they challenged the county’s development order of Veranda Bay. France, who referred to that judgment in a footnote in his latest ruling, issued an order in favor of Tanner and the group in September, also on anti-SLAPP grounds. His decision last week in favor of Bryan and Arnoff would appear to close the book on both matters, other than the court’s invitation to the prevailing parties to file motions to recover their legal costs, which have been heavy.

But Chiumento almost immediately filed notice that an appeal was forthcoming in the Tanner case. The Fifth District Court of Appeal is considering ordering mediation. No such notice has been filed regarding France’s Oct. 23 order in the Bryan-Arnoff case.




“This process has been five long years of hell and although it has been stressful not knowing the ultimate outcome, it has also been very difficult at times, having to constantly worry about these accusation hanging over my head,” Bryan said. “It’s been even harder on my family having to deal with this unfortunate lawsuit which in my opinion never should have been filed. I along with others were merely exercising our freedom of speech, something I took an oath to defend during my military career and many times after. We hope this is the end of this chapter in our lives and look forward to moving on without this burdensome issue.”

Bryan and Arnoff had filed separate motions for summary judgment. France heard their lawyers’ arguments on Sept. 20 and issued an order addressing both. A summary judgment ends a case before it reaches trial. The court has the authority to issue that ruling if the facts of the case are not in dispute, and if the court finds there’s no reason to go further, or to hand over one or more questions to the jury that can already be answered, and when the the arguments for a trial are “implausible” or “blatantly contradicted by the record.”

The whole case revolved around a few words Bryan and Arnoff spoke at the Nov. 7, 2019 meeting of Preserve Flagler Beach. (See: “At Opponents’ Meeting on The Gardens Development Off John Anderson, More Vigilance Than Chest-Thumping.”) They were referring to a Sunbelt development in St. Johns County, on Old Gun House Road where, as Bryan described it, “they had clear-cut this entire property,” and were then fined by the county. Arnoff put it this way: “And Sunbelt, their mode of operation is to go in and clear-cut all of the land.” Clear-cutting was not illegal, but required a permit.




“The only evidence in the record as to whether or not the alleged statements are false, demonstrates that [Sunbelt] did in fact clear cut trees,” France ruled. “First, [Sunbelt] admit that it is common for land developers to clear land in order to build upon it. Second, Plaintiff, Sunbelt Land Management, LLC was cited for clearing land without required County approval and aerial photographs of the ‘Gardens’ property show massive clearing.”

Chiumento argued in pleadings that th company was “unrelated” to the public controversy. The court found that argument “unconvincing.”

“Sunbelt Land Management cannot plausibly claim to not be a limited public figure, regarding a matter of public concern for purposes of this lawsuit, given the public statements of its self-proclaimed agent, Mr. [Ken] Belshe, on July 1, 2019, that [his company’s] proposed ‘Gardens’ development ‘needs to be a community discussion’,” France ruled. Since the company was found to be a public figure, the threshold of proving defamation was much higher.

So even if the statements about clear-cutting had not been true, Sunbelt had to show that Arnoff and Bryan had made their statements not only with disregard for the truth, but with malice, an “overwhelming” standard, according to law. That was not the case, and Sunbelt couldn’t show evidence that it was. “‘Sunbelt’s’ development and clearing of land in St. Johns County and Flagler County attracted so much public attention that they caused St Johns County to enact new legislation to deter such practices as part of a developer’s mode of operation,” the ruling states. It was those reports that Arnoff and Bryan relied on in part to offer their opinion at the Preserve meeting.




In sum, the statements Bryan and Arnoff made were found to be “substantially true.” They were also protected for being matters of opinion. And they violated the anti-slapp law, France ruled. The judge was especially critical of the way Sunbelt added Arnoff as a named defendant, waiting almost three years when it had a recording of the Nov. 2019 event the entire time, and could have asked Bryan about her identity in a deposition, as it eventually did of another witness. It did not even depose Bryan.

It was never clear why the company opted to file the suits against Bryan, Arnoff or Tanner as it sought to smooth its own way in Flagler County and now in Flagler Beach to clear the way for Veranda Bay and its evolutions. The company is going through the rezoning and annexation process with Flagler Beach,  where it faces some resistance about the details of its plan, and more especially about the number of housing units it is wanting to build–2,735. City commissioners sought the annexation and want Veranda Bay in their borders, but at least two commissioners are uneasy with the number of housing units.

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