A pair of YouTube videos have turned a 31-year-old Lansing woman into a lawsuit defendant.
Erica Caughey, a former state House staffer, is accused of defamation by former Rep. Lisa Brown of West Bloomfield (above), as Charles Crumm reports in The Oakland Press.
Ericah Caughey, 31, former legislative aide.
[Photo from LinkedIn]In the two videos posted last October, Ericah Caughey says Brown fired her as a legislative staffer in 2009 after she became pregnant.
"After making crude comments about chasing me with a coat hanger, she fired me without explanation," Caughey says in one of the videos.
Brown is asking an Ingham County Court to rule that videos posted on YouTube by Caughey are defamatory and that Caughey remove them.
One video (below) runs half a minute, while the other is a four-minute kitchen interview. Both appear professionally produced and edited.
Brown's May 8 court filing says she has "clear and convincing evidence" that Caughey's statements are false or made with "reckless disregard" for truth, Crumm writes.
Caughey, a 31-year-old Lansing resident now working as an administrative assistant at a health insurer, tells the reporter:
"I'm sticking to my story, it's the truth. . . . She's trying to silence me, I have the right to freedom of speech and I'm not going to be bullied by her again."
While in the Legislature, Brown made global news when House Speaker Jase Bolger barred her from speaking on the House floor last June after she used the word "vagina" during an abortion bill debate.
