An aviation consultant whose “nearly impossible” child custody battle raged for years in Wyoming’s court system is suing a Teton County newspaper, saying it falsely labeled him a child abuser despite court documents contradicting the claim.
David Laurence Mecartney filed his $25 million federal defamation lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming against the Jackson Hole News&Guide.
Mecartney is an aviation consultant living in Arizona, court documents say, while the Jackson Hole News&Guide is registered in Wyoming under the business name Teton Media Works.
The controversy revolves around a May 21 story by Guide reporter Jasmine Hall featuring David Mecartney’s son, Dune Mecartney, and Dune’s advocacy effort to give kids “a safe haven” from child abuse.
In the public-facing version of that story online as of Wednesday, the narrative says Dune Mecartney referred to his father as “his abuser.”
According to David Mecartney’s lawsuit, filed by Jason Ochs of Ochs Law Firm, the original version of the story didn’t attribute the label “his abuser” to the son, but treated it instead as an objective fact.
The complaint also says the newspaper did not reach out to David Mecartney for comment before running the story.
The News&Guide and Hall did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.
The Follow-Up
David Mecartney wrote a letter to the Jackson Hole News and Guide on May 23, two days after the first story, the complaint says.
“I am not the abuser,” he wrote. “The truth is far more complex and deeply documented.”
David Mecartney referenced court testimony indicating “the abuse and emotional instability stem from the mother,” and he attached multiple pieces of evidence, like videos, the custody order, and a Department of Family Services report, according to the complaint.
He asked for a correction, offered to speak further or provide additional documentation, and requested a response within one week.
The complaint says the Guide “never responded” to the letter, then published “a grossly insufficient” update a week after the initial publication.
With the update, wrote Ochs, the outlet couched the abuse claim within an attribution to Dune, and noted under the story that David Mecartney denied having abused his son.
“This created a false impression of ongoing culpability and implied the court record supported the claims of abuse,” the complaint adds.
The Guide published a second story Aug. 20, highlighting Dune Mecartney’s child abuse prevention project.
According to the complaint, the story “maliciously reinforced the original defamatory statements and caused additional harm.”
With this story also, asserts Ochs, the Guide didn’t seek comment from David Mecartney.
Court Documents
The complaint says the Guide had access to, but ignored, court documents refuting the “abuser” label it allegedly applied to David Mecartney.
The story references court battles and processes in multiple portions.
To David Mecartney, that “clearly demonstrates the Defendants were aware of the pre-existing, ongoing litigation at the time of publication.”
One of those key documents is a Dec. 29, 2021, opinion in which the Wyoming Supreme Court upheld most, but not all, of a custody order by then-Teton County District Court Judge Timothy Day.
The custody arrangement gave Dune’s mother Kelly Cornell, initially, primary custody, despite Day’s numerous reservations about her conduct and credibility throughout what the high court called a “nearly impossible” custody battle. That was to phase into a joint custody reunification effort.
“This is a distressing case,” Day had written earlier that year.
The parents had significant means, but the child suffered as his mother enmeshed him too much in the details of the case, the judge continued.
The custody evaluator had recommended Cornell receive “intensive therapy around her problems with exaggerations and mis-perceptions of facts … and her projection of rage associated with feelings of abandonment and emotional abuse by (her ex-husband) onto (Dune),” court documents say.
David Mecartney’s Tuesday lawsuit lists what it calls other “key facts that directly contradict the Article’s defamatory statements” from Day’s custody order.
Those include:
• “The Court finds that no substantial evidence of child abuse by Father was proven at trial.”
• “While Mother asserts the child’s emotional and mental struggles are related to a history of abuse by Father, that abuse was extensively discussed at trial and not substantiated. Mother refuses to accept that the abuse has not been substantiated. … When DFS refused to concur that abuse had occurred, Mother responded to DFS with hostility.”
• “This Court has seen abuse cases. This case does not have the indicia of child or spousal abuse.”
Day had voiced what the complaint calls “substantial” credibility concerns with Cornell.
The judge concluded that Cornell had alienated Dune from David Mecartney since their separation, waging an “inappropriate and damaging” severance of father and son, court documents say.
That was “undeniably disturbing,” Day added.
‘Hostile And Aggressive Subversion’
Day was torn, his order indicates.
The Wyoming Supreme Court justices who reviewed his decision to give Cornell, initially, primary custody and subject David Mecartney to a rigorous reunification program illustrated his dilemma as well, in its opinion.
On the one hand, wrote Day, Cornell had engaged in “hostile and aggressive subversion of the Father-child relationship since the parties separated,” “demonstrated no consistent ability to coparent,” among other issues.
But Dune had been living with his mother. The boy “emphatically” did not want to live with his father. So staying with her could bring stability, the high court related from Day’s ruling.
Day’s ruling maintained hope that Cornell could improve her approach to coparenting.
The Wyoming Supreme Court upheld the custody order, but overturned Day’s decision to subject David Mecartney to alcohol use monitoring.
The case featured “uncontested evidence” that David Mecartney hadn’t used alcohol since around 1990, the high court wrote, so that monitoring requirement was not appropriate.
Then-Justice Keith Kautz, joined by Justice Lynne Boomgaarden (who is now chief justice), disagreed with overturning the requirement in a minority dissent.
Yes, the evidence showed David Mecartney hadn’t been using alcohol, wrote Kautz. But still, the boy had “sincerely held fears, even if irrational,” that his father abused alcohol, which the requirement recognized.
Cornell declined Tuesday to comment publicly at this time.
Dune Mecartney did not respond by publication time to an email request for comment.
Maricopa County court records online say that David Mecartney sued both his son and ex-wife June 29. Cowboy State Daily obtained the complaint, which requests damages, and for Dune's website accusing David of abuse to taken down, among other remedies.
Back To The Newspaper Story
Ochs on David Mecartney’s behalf wrote that the newspaper's “decision to publish the defamatory Article, despite having knowledge of the public court records, demonstrates a striking lack of professional due regard for the truth and a conscious indifference to the substantial harm it would inflict upon the Plaintiff.”
David Mecartney asserts two causes of action against the news outlet.
The first is defamation per se, which asserts a more severe form of reputational attack that is inherently damaging in its nature.
Accusing someone of child abuse and domestic violence “constitutes defamation per se under Wyoming law,” wrote Ochs.
“The publications have severely injured his reputation, diminishing the esteem, respect, goodwill and confidence in which he is held within his community and professional life,” the complaint says, adding that David Mecartney’s successful career in aviation “demands absolute trust and confidence from clients.”
Being cast as a child and wife abuser has harmed his professional standing and income, the complaint alleges.
Negligent infliction of emotional distress is David Mecartney’s second claim against the newspaper.
For David Mecartney, Ochs asserts that the Guide owed the father a duty of care in its reporting and publication, but negligently breached that duty, causing emotional distress, humiliation, anxiety and an inability to engage in normal social activities.
The complaint asks for general and punitive damages, plus nominal damages and case costs — all comprising at least $25 million.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
