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Media
Judge quashes subpoena against Daily Business Review reporter
April 25, 2006
By Jordana Mishory
Broward Circuit Judge Marc Gold has quashed a subpoena served on a Daily Business Review reporter in a criminal case against a Coral Springs attorney.
On Dec. 7, 2004, the Review published an article by staff reporter Julie Kay about criminal charges against Scott Salomon. He was accused of fraud and grand theft for allegedly bilking two clients by failing to pay off mortgages that the clients thought had been refinanced.
Prosecutors say one of the clients lost her home in a foreclosure as a result of the alleged fraud. Salomon also faces disciplinary action by The Florida Bar.
For the December 2004 article, Kay interviewed Salomon. The article quoted him saying that one of his former employees was to blame for the unpaid mortgages. The following month, Kay received a subpoena from the Broward County state attorney’s office compelling her to testify in the case.
The Review challenged the subpoena, and Judge Gold held a hearing last October. On March 29, he issued an order quashing the subpoena.
The Review’s attorney, Sanford Bohrer, a partner at Holland & Knight in Miami, said he thinks prosecutors wanted Kay’s testimony to identify any discrepancies in Salomon’s statements. “I don’t think they ever had enough substance to convince the judge that they ne eded her,” Bohrer said in an interview.
The office of Broward County State Attorney Michael Satz declined to comment. Salomon’s attorney, J. David Bogenschutz, of Bogenschutz & Dutko in Fort Lauderdale, could not be reached.
A growing number of journalists around the country are being subpoenaed by federal and state prosecutors to testify about matters they have covered or to surrender their notes. Journalism organizations have been pressing Congress to pass a federal shield law enabling journalists to keep their sources confidential unless there are pressing national security issues involved. But efforts to pass such a bill have stalled.
Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit journalism advocacy group, praised Judge Gold’s decision to kill the subpoena in Kay’s case.
Requiring journalists to testify in trials concerning matters they’ve covered can have a chilling effect on their ability to do their jobs and serve the public, she said. Testifying could affect how the public views journalists’ independence. Such a role, she said, makes it look like journalists are agents for the government.
Salomon is a prominent solo practitioner who has represented the family of Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter, as well as celebrities such as former NBA player John Salley and former Miami Dolphins punter Reggie Roby.
Salomon was charged by the Broward state attorney’s office following an investigation by the state Department of Financial Services, Division of Insurance Fraud and Division of Agent and Agency Services.
According to the Department of Financial Services, a Coral Springs woman lost her home because Salomon failed to pay the old mortgage as part of a mortgage refinancing and did not tell her that the title insurance had been canceled. Investigators with the department’s Division of Insurance Fraud found that Salomon used forged closing letters in at least two refinancing deals to indicate that title insurance was in place, according to a statement from the agency.
Prosecutors alleged he did this despite being notified by the Attorney’s Title Insurance Fund that his endorsement to sell title insurance had been cancelled.
Concerning the felony case against him, Salomon told the Review in 2004 that he blamed a former employee of his law firm, who he said was a convicted money launderer, for failing to pay the woman’s mortgage. He said he fired that employee at the same time the investigation began and didn’t know where he was. “What I’m guilty of is not supervising my employees well enough,” he was quoted as saying in the 2004 article.
He also blamed the title insurance company, Attorney’s Title Insurance Fund, for failing to “live up their obligations” and cover the mortgages. “A woman did not lose her money because of me,” he said.
Probable cause findings
Salomon claimed that the Bar’s Broward general counsel had a personal vendetta against him because he beat another disciplinary charge brought by the Bar in 2003. A Bar referee found him not guilty of failing to send a check to an out-of-state attorney he had hired.
But days after he was found not guilty, a new probable cause finding was made by Bar investigators, according to the Bar. Last July, another probable cause finding was made.
The Bar said it will file official complaints against Salomon with the Florida Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decides whether to approve or modify a Bar referee’s suggested discipline.
Kay estimated that she received almost 20 subpoenas in the Salomon case since receiving the first one in January 2005. Most came from prosecutors, though some came from Bogenschutz, Salomon’s attorney.
Kay said the subpoenas were for her testimony, not for her reporter’s notes. She said she didn’t want to testify because she feared it would discourage other sources from talking to her in the future.
Dalglish agreed that journalists acquiescing to subpoenas could jeopardize relationships with sources. She stressed that it’s important for news organizations to vigorously fight such subpoenas because acquiescing simply encourages prosecutors and defense attorneys to subpoena journalists in the future.
Kay said Judge Gold’s ruling is a victory for the First Amendment.
Jordana Mishory can be reached at jmishory@alm.com. Carl Jones provided additional reporting for this article.
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