Lake Restoration Solutions is not backing down in its lawsuit against Brigham Young University professor Benjamin Abbott, but Abbot has made it clear he won’t be backing down either.

LRS, the proponents of the contentious Utah Lake Restoration Project, filed a complaint in the 3rd Judicial District court against Abbott on Jan. 10, suing him for $3 million claiming defamation, false light and intentional interference with prospective economic relations.

Abbott, an ecology professor who has studied Utah Lake since 2018, has been outspokenly opposed to the Utah Lake Restoration Project. The lawsuit against Abbott cites multiple posts from Abbott’s personal blog and Facebook pages, claiming that these and other statements made by Abbott have damaged Lake Restorations Solutions’ relations with prospective investors.

However, Abbott believes that the lawsuit against him is merely a tactic to intimidate him into silence.

“It seems like they don’t want to play by the rules unless they’re forced to, but they’re happy to use the rules to try to inconvenience and intimidate other people,” he said. “I think the question that we should all be asking ourselves is, is this the kind of group that we think is capable of building the world’s largest dredged islands? Is this the kind of group we want to be working with for the next 15 to 40 years?”

In court filings last week, Abbott’s legal team filed an anti-SLAPP motion. Utah’s anti-SLAPP law is meant to protect individuals who believe they have been sued as a means of harassment for participating in the process of government. The motion states that the lawsuit filed against Abbott is strategic, and against public participation.

“Professor Abbott is a vocal critic of LRS and its notorious proposal to dredge, develop, and potentially destroy Utah Lake,” reads the motion. “The success of LRS’s proposal–and especially the success of LRS’s efforts to obtain the necessary governmental approvals and permitting–is threatened by Professor Abbott’s public critiques, and it is attempting to weaponize the judicial system to silence him.”

A subpoena from plaintiff LRS to Conserve Utah Valley, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to land and water conservation, was filed on May 16. Members of CUV have spoken out against the Utah Lake Restoration Project, and the organization has also raised funds to cover Abbott’s legal fees.

“We find it frustrating that LRS used the legal process to involve our organization in its lawsuit,” Craig Christensen, executive director of CUV, said in a prepared statement. “We try to work in good faith to bring more transparency and collaboration to solve issues surrounding the challenges facing Utah Lake. We wish the developers would focus on involving the public in their plans instead of using the law to antagonize those who want to participate.”

The subpoena consisted of nine requests for information, including all communications between members of CUV and members of LRS, all documents or communications relating to the “Ben Abbott Legal Defense Fund,” and all communications between members of CUV and Abbott referring to LRS, the Utah Lake Development Fund, a development project on or adjacent to Utah Lake and the lawsuit against Abbott.

In a May 31 letter from Brigham Daniels, a law professor at BYU, on behalf of CUV to LRS’ lawyers, Daniels wrote that CUV lacked the necessary information to respond to many of the subpoena’s requests and objected to the subpoena as a whole.

“LRS’s Subpoena imposes an undue burden on CUV. Specifically, the vast majority of the requests in the Subpoena are neither relevant, nor proportional to the issues in the case as required by Rule 26(b),” Daniels wrote. “Therefore, CUV objects to the subpoena as being overly broad, unduly burdensome, disproportionate to the needs of the case, and objects because the Subpoena seeks irrelevant information.”

CUV produced with the letter nonprivileged communications with Abbott that were identified after a reasonable search.

According to Jon Benson, president and CEO of LRS, the company has been concerned about what they perceive to be the spread of misinformation regarding the Utah Lake Restoration Project and considers the subpoena a part of the company’s due diligence in their case against Abbott.

“The sole purpose of the lawsuit continues to be stopping the spread of misinformation so the public can have true and factual information about the incredible opportunity we have as a state to restore and enhance Utah Lake,” he said. “We are hoping to better understand what false, misleading and defamatory information that Ben Abbott may have shared with Conserve Utah Valley and any potential collaboration to help spread that information to the public.”

According to Abbott, he has never knowingly spread misinformation regarding LRS or the Utah Lake Restoration Project and, he claims, has tried to do quite the opposite.

“From the very beginning, I really gave it my best effort to correctly represent LRS’ position, based on their proposal, the statements they made and coverage there had been on their project,” he said.

When asked if he believed it would still be possible for LRS and CUV to work together on bettering Utah Lake in the future, Benson responded that collaboration between the two groups would be ideal.

“Ideally, we can all find common ground and work together toward the objective of improving and restoring Utah Lake for the benefit of all Utahns,” he said “That’s a goal worthy of collaboration even when we have differing opinions and perspectives. We hope that Conserve Utah Valley will not participate in spreading any false and defamatory information and that we can move forward with a more positive and collaborative dialogue.”

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