Loudoun Land Rights Advocate Sued Over Satire of Slow-Growth Proponent
By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 25, 2005
People have dragged a hodgepodge of props -- sheep, tractors, Darth Vader, Patrick Henry, fake coffins, the music of Tammy Wynette, thousands of Monopoly houses -- into the battle over suburban sprawl in Loudoun County.
But none of the theatrics ever got anyone into serious trouble, until a man walked up to the podium at a board of supervisors meeting last year and identified himself as "Mr. Valerie Kelly," the husband of a vocal critic of development.
His nearly three-minute monologue landed him in court -- a bizarre twist in the county's heated debate over growth that raised questions about the line between satire and humiliation, between witty zoning rhetoric and bad taste.
The man said he'd come to apologize for the behavior of his wife. "You just got to talk to her," he said, asking whether he could smoke and placing a tall bottle of liquor next to him on the podium. "She listens to you. She reads everything you say. She doesn't give me the time of day anymore, which is why I've just left and I'm shacked up with some blonde in Hillsboro."
He was tall and unshaven, scruffy-looking in a flannel shirt, jeans and black knit cap. And he wasn't Valerie Kelly's husband.
His name was John Grigsby, and his speech was a performance -- a snippet of amateur theater poking fun at Kelly, his political rival on the development issue. A few in the audience chuckled, and others looked dismayed. But one person in particular was not amused: Kelly's real husband, Bob.
Bob Kelly sued Grigsby for defamation of character, seeking $1.5 million in damages.
In one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, where the population has jumped 41 percent in four years and development continues to transform the rural landscape, the rapid changes have fueled a quirky kind of political warfare that is sometimes humorous, sometimes hostile.
Kelly v. Grigsby caused each side of the growth issue to accuse the other of taking the development battle to outlandish extremes. And it sparked worries that people would censor themselves at the podium in public meetings, for fear not only of a lawsuit but also of being the target of another embarrassing spoof.
Grigsby's skit "has a chilling effect on people speaking out," said Andrea McGimsey, a spokeswoman for Campaign for Loudoun's Future, which opposes the rapid development in the county. "They don't want to get involved with something that sordid."
Valerie Kelly was sitting in the audience that February morning last year when Grigsby appeared before the board inside its Leesburg chambers. The 56-year-old Middleburg woman was outraged. Here was a man she barely knew pretending to be her husband, telling everyone that she didn't respect him anymore.
"I was stunned," she recalled. "I was completely stunned."
But she didn't say anything. Actually, she couldn't say anything: Her mouth was taped shut.
At the previous board meeting, Supervisor Stephen J. Snow (R-Dulles) had referred to Kelly as an "idiot" after she blurted out a remark about his ancestors (he later apologized). So in part to protest Snow's comment, Kelly attended the meeting wearing a piece of duct tape over her mouth, one of several theatrical presentations she has made before the supervisors over the years.
She once attended a meeting wearing a Barbra Streisand-style mask. She was so displeased by the board's Republican majority that she displayed for them her idea for a new county flag: a collage of flags from North Korea, the Taliban in Afghanistan and other regimes. And there was the time she dumped plastic Monopoly houses -- 100,000 of them ordered specially in red -- on a local map at a hearing.
She said these demonstrations were an attention-grabbing way of expressing her views against unchecked growth.
Grigsby also has strong opinions about growth -- and Valerie Kelly's boardroom theatrics. The 41-year-old Hillsboro computer programmer, who agreed to be interviewed only by e-mail, is a property rights advocate who has sparred with Kelly and other smart-growth proponents on Internet forums and in local newspapers' letters sections.
Grigsby described his skit as "one of those 1 a.m. ideas" that he now regrets. He said that he intended it as a harmless joke, featuring a fictional "cartoonish Joe Six-Pack" character. Grigsby and Bob Kelly had never met, and Grigsby maintained that had he known Valerie Kelly was married, he would have picked a different persona. He said his performance was merely a satirical response to Valerie Kelly's antics, which he found offensive.
"I don't understand her, but I certainly don't wish her ill," Grigsby wrote in his e-mail. "I was, as a friend from Buffalo would say, 'busting her chops.' As everyone knows, 'the blonde' I said I was 'shacking up' with was my wife."
Bob Kelly bears no resemblance to Grigsby's character: He is the soft-spoken, clean-shaven owner of a tiny but bustling yarn shop in Middleburg. He teaches crochet, color theory and knitting classes (there's a waiting list) and prides himself on stocking the shelves with bamboo needles made in Japan and wool from Uruguay.
He worried that being portrayed as a drunk and an adulterer at a public meeting shown live on local cable television had damaged his reputation and hurt his business. He said sales dropped by thousands of dollars for three months after Grigsby's skit.
"What if somebody clicks it on just as he's saying my name is Mr. Valerie Kelly and as they watch it they say, 'What a jerk,' and then they click it off, just after I'm shacked up with a blonde," Bob Kelly, 56, said as he sat inside Hunt Country Yarns one recent evening, knitting with a frizzy, green-and-red sample of designer yarn. "They have no idea that's Mr. Grigsby."
Throughout the county, where some residents have become so frustrated with the pace of development that they talk seriously about seceding to break away from suburban Loudoun, people's opinions about the case often split down party lines.
Supporters of growth donated money for Grigsby's legal fees and felt that the Kellys were using a silly skit as an excuse to haul someone from their side to court. Development opponents found the skit repulsive and hoped that the lawsuit would make pro-growth types think twice before doing anything like that again.
But both sides agreed on one thing: Their presentations before the board had grown wackier over the years as they desperately tried to win over the public and the supervisors.
Pro-development activists sponsored tractor parades and held a mock funeral for property rights in the boardroom, complete with coffin and grieving widow. Slow-growth supporters held an acoustic guitar singalong inside the chambers to the tune of Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" (theirs went "Stand by Our Plan").
In legal briefs and throughout a two-day jury trial late in March, Grigsby's appearance before the board was scrutinized thoroughly.
The defense argued that Grigsby's bottle -- with "XXXX" written on its white label -- made clear to spectators the speech was satire. A supervisor had identified Grigsby by name before, during and after the skit, leaving no question, Grigsby's attorney said, about the true identity of the speaker at the podium.
But Bob Kelly's attorneys called to the witness stand six women who had been sitting in the audience that day. They testified that they either were confused about the identity of the man at the podium or believed at the time he was indeed Mr. Kelly.
Grigsby apologized from the stand, saying he "wouldn't want to humiliate someone or push them beyond the norm."
The seven-person jury needed only a few hours to reach its verdict: Its members ruled against Grigsby and awarded Bob Kelly $7,500 in damages.
Bob Kelly said it was never about the money. "We've now made our point and set case law, so if this ever gets done again, there's law that protects the next person who gets bashed about like this," he said.
Grigsby's attorney, state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli (R-Fairfax), said no appeal is planned.
Grigsby said the verdict will not stop him from speaking his mind at board meetings. "I don't intimidate easily," he wrote.