Retired Atlanta defamation attorney L. Lin Wood must pay three of his former colleagues $3.75 million after defaming them to thousands of his social media followers, a jury in Atlanta has decided.
Wood, whose theories about fraud during the 2020 presidential election saw him banned from the social media platform then known as Twitter, repeatedly accused the three attorneys who worked in his Atlanta law firm of being criminal extortionists. The attorneys – Nicole Wade, Jonathan Grunberg and Taylor Wilson – have been in a yearslong battle with Wood over client fees since leaving his firm in February 2020.
The jury found that Wood’s comments about his former colleagues, published on the Telegram app in 2021, were at least negligent. Shortly before suing Wood and his firm in August 2020, Wade, Grunberg and Wilson offered to settle their grievances against him for $1.25 million .
“We’re just very thankful that a federal jury took so much time out of their lives to hear us out and were able to reach this result on our behalf,” Wade told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.