By Jane Musgrave
For three days in November, Mark Feinstein sat in a Palm Beach County courtroom, hoping a fellow Ocean Ridge resident would be held accountable for falsely accusing him of engaging in a bizarre sexual act.
The former president of the Turtle Beach condominium association got his wish when the jury, after roughly an hour of deliberation, agreed that 38-year-old Sean Currie libeled Feinstein in September 2022 when he posted the accusation on the town’s Facebook page.
The jury ordered Currie to pay Feinstein $135,000 to compensate the 66-year-old attorney for the damage the inflammatory, obscene and unfounded allegation did to his reputation.
“They gave me back my name,” a jubilant Feinstein said a day after the jury reached its verdict. “It’s not about the money. It’s never been about the money. It’s about giving me back my name.”
Attorney Matthew Haynes, who represented Feinstein, agreed. “He held Mark’s name and legacy hostage and the jury set it free,” he said.
Neither Currie nor his attorney returned emails for comment about whether they would appeal. During the trial, they argued that Currie had a First Amendment right to express his views about Feinstein. Currie signed the post and, in sworn statements, readily admitted he wrote it.
Currie testified that he chose the term carefully, knowing it was both obscure and disgusting, which meant it would get a lot of attention. He laughed at his word choice, but insisted that he wasn’t trying to hurt Feinstein.
“I made my statements to hopefully bring awareness to the issues that were going on in my town,” Currie testified.
The issue was beach access. At the time, Currie was living with his parents on Tropical Drive, which borders the yellow 26-unit oceanfront condominium a half-mile south of Woolbright Road.
Inflamed after Turtle Beach in 2021 erected “No Trespassing” signs on its stretch of the beach, Currie and his neighbors began their campaign against the condominium association.
Currie ripped down a sign, leading to his arrest on a charge of criminal mischief. While the charge was dropped after he agreed to reimburse the association $300 for the sign, the feud escalated.
Tropical Drive resident Bryan Joffe paid $40,000 for two strips of land — one leading to the beach and another that borders the condominium’s back entrance and has long been used by Turtle Beach for garbage pickup.
Joffe turned the land over to Sunrise Beach LLC, a company formed by fellow Tropical Drive residents, including Currie and his mother.
In 2023, the corporation sued Turtle Beach, demanding that the condo association get off its land. The association countersued, claiming it had used the property for years for garbage pickup and essentially had “squatters rights.”
The suit was settled last summer for undisclosed terms. The only concrete evidence of the settlement came in May when a wooden gate was erected to give Tropical Drive residents exclusive access to the path that leads to the beach.
Feinstein said he bore the brunt of the battle because he was president of the condominium association’s board.
When the feud was raging, Currie regularly assailed Feinstein, hurling anti-semitic epithets at him, often punctuated with an obscenity, Feinstein said. Currie didn’t deny Feinstein’s claims, insisting his actions were justified.
“Because he is a horrible person and he’s Jewish, so, therefore, it’s an apt derogatory slur,” Currie said during a deposition in the libel case. “I wouldn’t call him the slur for an Italian or a Black person, because he’s not Italian or Black.”
Currie took a similar stance during the trial. “I think most of the time I use the worst possible language when referring to him,” said Currie, who now lives in California.
While he said he regularly uses racial and ethnic slurs if someone’s behavior justifies it, he insisted he’s not a bigot.
“If they’re a woman, I call them (words) appropriate to a woman. If they’re a man who is a particular way, I use that word,” Currie testified. “I use the appropriate words based on the context which they are in. That is not bigotry.”
Feinstein said he took no joy in suing Currie. Had Currie asked the town to hide the obscene post, or written another one explaining that his allegation was untrue, Feinstein said he would have dropped the lawsuit.
But, he said, Currie refused.
“He wouldn’t give me an apology, but the jury did,” Feinstein said. “They gave me the apology.”
Haynes said he hopes the jury verdict teaches a valuable lesson to Currie and others who use social media to launch baseless attacks on political foes.
“The verdict reaffirms that this behavior is not acceptable in Ocean Ridge — a beautiful community — or anywhere in Palm Beach County,” Haynes said.
Comments