DETROIT, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- A Michigan state prosecutor who lost his job over statements he made about a gay University of Michigan student body president has lost a defamation suit.
Chris Armstrong, 22, who graduated from the university last year, was awarded $4.5 million in damages by a jury in federal court in Detroit, CNN reported. But his lawyer, Deborah Gordon, said Armstrong is unlikely to see the money since Andrew Shirvell, the defendant in the lawsuit, has no job.
Gordon said Armstrong would have dropped the legal case if Shirvell had been willing to retract statements he made.
Shirvell, an alumnus of the university, began attacking Armstrong online when Armstrong became the first open homosexual to serve as student body president. In a 2010 interview with CNN, he said Armstrong was promoting a "radical agenda."
"I'm a Christian citizen exercising my First Amendment rights," he said.
Gordon said, however, that defamatory statements that are untrue have no First Amendment protection. For example, Gordon said, Shirvell accused her client of plying freshmen with liquor to get them to embrace the "homosexual lifestyle."
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox fired Shirvell in 2010, finding he was involved in "borderline stalking behavior" and had used state resources inappropriately.
