Lin Wood is sentenced to pay $3.75 million for defamation in dispute with former colleagues

“We are just very grateful that a federal jury took so much time to hear us and was able to reach this conclusion on our behalf,” Wade told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Wood and his lawyers in the defamation trial did not immediately respond to questions about the verdict, which was handed down Thursday.

Wood's trial began Aug. 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The eight jurors will return to court Friday to decide how much Wood must pay in legal fees. Wade, Grunberg and Wilson are seeking 33% of the verdict as fees for their attorneys in the case.

The trial follows a ruling in March that Wood's comments were false and defamatory. U.S. District Judge Michael L. Brown found in an order at the time that Wood encouraged his Telegram followers to file a lawsuit with the Georgia State Bar against Wade, Grunberg and Wilson, arguing that they should be disbarred.

The jury had to determine whether Wood was liable for damages.

Wood testified in court that he felt compelled to speak out publicly against Wade, Grunberg and Wilson in 2021 when he was running for chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party. He said he was “skewered” in the election and attributed it to “offensive” allegations by his former colleagues that he had refused to pay them their share of client fees, among other things.

“You get punished for telling the truth,” Wood told the jury. “People don't want to hear it. I said it to defend myself. Sometimes the truth feels like a weapon.”

Wood's dispute with Wade, Grunberg and Wilson was part of the Georgia Bar's investigation into Wood's conduct. The state bar agreed to drop its investigation when Wood surrendered his law license in July 2023. Wood told the AJC that he is not licensed to practice law outside of Georgia and has retired.

During his testimony Wednesday, Wood said he had disdain for the legal system he had been a part of for decades. Wood's high-profile clients included Centennial Olympic Park hero Richard Jewell. Jewell's lawsuit against the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which first reported Jewell's crime, was dismissed in 2011 after an appeals court ruled that the newspaper's reporting was substantially accurate at the time of publication.

“I loved fighting for truth and justice,” Wood testified. “The legal system is corrupt. And it's evil. It's not fair to people.”

Wood's public comments about his former colleagues also led to him being sanctioned by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is handling the ongoing client fee dispute. In June 2023, Wood was found in contempt of court and fined $5,000 for violating a 2020 court order prohibiting him from disparaging Wade, Grunberg and Wilson. Wood had challenged the order preventing him from disparaging Wade, Grunberg and Wilson, but it was upheld by the Georgia State Court of Appeals in February 2022.

McAfee also ordered Wood to pay his former colleagues more than $42,000 in legal fees related to the contempt of court ruling and threatened Wood with further sanctions if he continued to publicly speak ill of Wade, Grunberg and Wilson.

The three lawyers said they left Wood's firm because of his erratic and threatening behavior toward them. They have formed their own firm specializing in defamation cases.

Together with Wood, the three lawyers represented several plaintiffs in high-profile cases, including British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth in his defamation case against businessman Elon Musk (whose company includes X, formerly known as Twitter). They also represented Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann.

Wade, Grunberg and Wilson alleged, among other things, that Wood refused to pay them their share of the fees after Sandmann settled claims against CNN and other media companies.