Photo by Emilio Mamuyac via Google Business
Minocqua Brewing Company
Minocqua Brewing Company
After years of politically charged disputes with local officials and an order which might have shut down the business, Minocqua Brewing Company in northern Wisconsin will remain in operation after its owner reached an agreement with an Oneida County committee. However, the owner and his brewery have also been ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages as the result of a defamation lawsuit brought against them by the owner of a local newspaper.
As chronicled in the Shepherd Express in August, officials in Oneida County revoked an operating permit for the brewery for repeated violations of an ordinance which prohibited it from allowing customers to consume alcohol products on its outdoor premises and for failure to provide six parking spaces as required by the county. Brewery owner Kirk Bangstad said the property on which the brewery operates in an historic former fire station wasn’t large enough to accommodate both six parking spaces and a beer garden. He accused conservative county officials of targeting his business with “selective enforcement” of rules because they opposed his outspoken political activity on behalf of liberal and progressive causes.
But, just days after the committee voted to revoke the permit, it subsequently reversed course and allowed for a six month extension of time during which the business would be allowed to revise its permit in order to meet ordinance requirements. The committee subsequently approved a conditional use business permit on October 7th under which MBC would install four parking spaces and would be allowed to construct an outdoor beer garden.
Victory Over Harassment
In a social media post, Bangstad’s called the permit approval a victory over “authoritarianism, government cronyism and political harassment.” Bangstad wrote, “This is a truly unbelievable win and shows the power of grass-roots organizing and how important it is to be a squeaky wheel for justice and fairness, even when the odds are against you.”
However, while Bangstad and his brewery scored wins by finally getting approval for its beer garden and a reinstatement of its operating permit, he was found liable for defamation late last month in a lawsuit brought by the publisher of several northern Wisconsin newspapers, including The Lakeland Times. A jury ruled that Bangstad and MBC collectively must pay $750,000 in damages to the newspaper’s publisher, Gregg Walker. It’s believed to be the largest monetary award to an individual for defamation in Wisconsin history.
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Walker sued in 2021 after Bangstad, in a series of social media posts, called him a “crook” and a “misogynist” and falsely accused Walker of using a derogatory slur against mentally disabled people in an editorial. In the lawsuit, Walker also accused Bangstad of lying when he accused Walker of abusing his father for his own financial gain.
But the largest part of the damages which the jury awarded to Walker were for an allegation by Bangstad that Walker stood by and “did nothing” to save his brother in a 1987 hunting accident in which the brother, Brad, died. Bangstad accused Walker of allowing the brother to die and claimed Walker did so because he knew at the time that he would get sole inheritance of his family’s newspaper if his brother was out of the way. Bangstad later recanted the accusation.
Bangstad said he called Walker a “crook” because Walker’s newspaper supported false claims by former president Donald Trump that he had won the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Neither the Trump campaign nor anyone else has provided any evidence to back up such claims. Nationally, more than five dozen courts have dismissed such claims as meritless or frivolous because the cases brought by Trump and his allies lacked credible evidence.
Bangstad said Forest County Judge Leon Stenz, who heard the case, erred when he dismissed the brewery’s defense which hinged on the premise that Bangstad’s social media posts about Walker were permissible because Walker is a “public figure.” Under law, public figures must meet a higher standard to prove defamation and must show that a defendant acted with actual malice in making a defamatory statement.
“We argued that since he owns and contributes to two newspapers that attack me regularly, I should be legally entitled to fight back,” Bangstad said. “I did that by accusing him of being a number of things, among them a ‘misogynist’ and a ‘crook’ because I found that the articles published in his paper were ‘misogynistic’ and ‘crooked.’ Had the judge ruled that Walker was a public figure over two years ago, he would have been forced to dismiss this case. Instead, he allowed this lawsuit to move forward and I was forced into a jury trial comprised of people who live in a county where Trump won by almost 60% of the vote and where the only local newspaper one can buy is owned by the plaintiff who has collectively published a total of 68 hit pieces against me over the last three years,” he said.
Hypocritical Rulings?
Bangstad’s questioned the impartiality of Stenz, a conservative judge, based on what he said were inconsistent and hypocritical rulings by him on the issue of what constitutes a public figure. “And what’s worse, when Judge Stenz dismissed my countersuit against (Walker) for publishing articles that called me ‘Baghdad Bangstad’ and a ‘Jackbooted Liberal’ — ostensibly likening me to global symbols of evil — his argument was that the paper had grounds to defame me because I WAS a ‘Public Figure,’” Bangstad wrote in a post to MBC’s Facebook page. “Imagine the incredulous looks on my team’s faces when the judge tried to rationalize that the publisher of the local paper was NOT a public figure but the owner of the local brewery WAS, while he legally tied our arms around our backs.”
Bangstad said his case was further hampered after many of the potential witnesses he wanted to call refused to testify because they feared retribution from Walker’s newspaper. “He has the ability to ruin reputations,” Bangstad said. “He’s done that numerous times over the last few decades, which seemingly has had a chilling effect over most local progressives.”
Bangstad likened the reticence of witnesses to testify in the court case to the hesitance with which he was met when he asked other business owners to support MBC during the brewery’s permitting disputes with the local officials he accused of unfair retaliation for his political advocacy on behalf of liberal causes. “It was like the whole town went silent when it came to any subject that might anger Gregg Walker,” he said. “To publicly side with the Minocqua Brewing Company is to invite the wrath of the Lakeland Times.”
Bangstad said he can understand how a jury would find that his since-retracted accusation regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of Walker’s brother was defamation but he said it doesn’t justify the amount of damages it awarded. “At issue, however, is not whether I went too far in a public fight with a newspaper, but whether there should be any damages awarded to that paper's publisher when a) subscriptions to the Lakeland Times didn’t fall due to any of my accusations, and b) there was absolutely no evidence that my words caused any emotional harm to a guy who publishes outrageous things about people he doesn’t like on a regular basis,” Bangstad wrote.
Bangstad said he and MBC will appeal the ruling and the award of damages. “We're going to appeal to a higher court where the results of that judge's decision doesn't affect whether or not the Republican Party supports him in his next election, nor whether the paper in the neighboring county takes its revenge by endorsing his opponent,” he said. “We're going to appeal to a higher court where justice is blind, like it's supposed to be.”
