A Colorado man who marched to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and then sued 9News’ Kyle Clark for defamation over subsequent news coverage settled the lawsuit days before the case had been set to be argued before the Colorado Court of Appeals, according to court records.
Chad Burmeister, a Colorado businessman, traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, and posted publicly on his Facebook page about participating in the march to the U.S. Capitol building, according to court filings.
The posts included a photo of himself and another protester captioned, “First guy to storm the capital (sic) today,” which he later edited to read, “Peaceful march to the capital (sic).”
The next day, Clark featured , using Burmeister’s own social media posts to cast doubt on a state lawmaker’s claim that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was not carried out by Trump supporters. The segment included comments from Burmeister that he did not go inside the building and did not believe he broke any laws.
Burmeister , alleging that Clark’s coverage falsely painted him as someone who participated in violence or vandalism during the march to the Capitol. Burmeister said he never went inside the building and was not violent during the event. In his lawsuit, he said he suffered damage to his reputation and his business, ScaleX.ai, because of the 9News segment.
Attorney Steve Zansberg, who , 9News’ parent company, argued that the damage to Burmeister’s reputation was done by his own social media posts, and that the news segment was accurate, not defamatory.
A district court judge dismissed the lawsuit, finding that Burmeister had not met the burden of proof to bring the claims, but he appealed.
The case was scheduled to go before the Colorado Court of Appeals for oral argument on Tuesday, but will no longer be argued since the settlement was reached April 13, said Jon Sarché, spokesman for the Colorado Judicial Department. He originally said Monday that the arguments would go forward, but said later that they would not, and that a motion to dismiss the appeal is expected Monday or Tuesday.
Zansberg said in an email that Burmeister agreed to pay $30,000 to the defendants in attorney’s costs and fees as part of the settlement.
“We are pleased with the outcome of this frivolous defamation lawsuit and the plaintiff’s decision to drop his appeal and pay court-awarded attorney’s fees,” Zansberg said in an email.
Burmeister’s attorney, Dan Ernst, said his client offered to settle “because he felt that to a large extent we have corrected the false and defamatory record created by Kyle Clark, Tenga Inc. and 9News.”
“It is now clear that Mr. Burmeister marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and did not participate in any violence and or vandalism and was not in the Capitol building that day,” Ernst said in an email. He added that because of the settlement, the courts did not rule on the legal questions that were debated during the case.
Zansberg said that by dropping the appeal, Burmeister “implicitly acknowledges his case was properly dismissed for lack of merit.”
Updated April 25, 2023, at 12:48 p.m.: This story was updated to reflect the settlement amount.
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