Jury sides with Pittsylvania resident in suit against county supervisor who kicked him out of meeting

A federal jury agreed with a Pittsylvania County resident who said the former chairman of the county’s board of supervisors was unjustified in ejecting him from a public meeting.

James Scearce sued Vic Ingram after being forcibly removed from a November 2022 supervisors’ meeting. A photo of Scearce being escorted out by sheriff’s deputies later appeared on the back page of the Chatham Star-Tribune, which Scearce claimed damaged his reputation.

Scearce will receive $1 in damages, the jury decided Thursday after a day-and-a-half-long trial in Danville, presided over by Judge Thomas Cullen.

There has been ongoing animosity between Scearce and Ingram, who still serves on the board but is no longer its chairman, since shortly after Ingram was elected in 2020. Scearce’s brother, Ron Scearce, also served on the board until 2022.

The Scearce brothers and Ingram frequently call each other out on Facebook, and James Scearce often speaks at board meetings to criticize Ingram and other members of the board.

This was the second lawsuit filed by James Scearce against Ingram. The first, which accused Ingram of failing to give the required three-day public notice of a meeting of the board’s naming committee, was thrown out by a judge in 2023.

At the November 2022 meeting, Ingram opened the public hearing by reading some ground rules, which required speakers to address the board as a body rather than speaking to specific members, according to witness testimony during the trial.

Scearce began speaking to the board by saying, “Tonight I would like to talk about the BoS chairman’s favorite special interest group, fire and rescue,” according to court documents.

Ingram then interrupted him, saying, “That is it, Mr. Scearce, your time is up. Sit down, sir,” according to the documents.

When Scearce continued to speak, Ingram asked that his microphone be turned off and that he be escorted out of the meeting.

“If he will not leave, go ahead and charge him with trespassing,” Ingram said, according to court documents.

While Scearce was being escorted out, Ingram explained his decision to the audience.

“For the citizens present, for eight of 10 months, he has stood before us and attacked one of us or all of us, and I just read this disclaimer and it’s not fair to let anybody abuse this process,” Ingram said, according to court documents.

“It has nothing to do with the First Amendment. You cannot run into a movie theater and yell ‘fire’ and you cannot stand up in a courthouse and disrupt the service, and you’re not going to disrupt our meeting, so he was forewarned.”

Ingram’s attorney, Joshua Piasta, argued during the trial that Ingram was justified in interrupting Scearce because it was his job as the board chairman to keep the meetings orderly, and Scearce had disrupted meetings in the past.

Scearce had been asked to leave an April 2022 meeting after standing up from the audience to criticize Ingram, who he said insulted his brother, who was also serving on the board at the time. This happened during a portion of the meeting that was not open to public comment.

Piasta argued that this lawsuit was not about the First Amendment, and was instead “about trying to poke Vic in the eye with an election coming up,” referring to the 2022 election. He claimed that Scearce had a “long-standing vendetta” against Ingram.

The jury of seven residents disagreed, ruling that Ingram was not justified in interrupting and removing Scearce, who was exercising his First Amendment rights in a limited public forum.

Rick Boyer, Scearce’s attorney, argued that Scearce had only referred to Ingram in his comments and had not addressed him directly.

“Jim and the defendant are entitled to not like each other, to not be best buddies, to be critical of each other,” Boyer told the jury in his opening statement. “That’s what freedom of speech is about.”

At the same November board meeting, Scearce’s wife, Vanessa Scearce, did directly address a board member, welcoming newcomer Robert Tucker to the board.

Ingram interrupted her and asked her not to address any member directly, but he did not have her escorted out, Boyer pointed out.

During his testimony at the trial, Scearce said that Ingram did not interrupt speakers with whom he agreed.

“He always gave people extra time to speak if they were speaking in his favor,” Scearce testified.

Piasta argued that Scearce “was not injured in any way, shape or form” by the photo that appeared in the Chatham Star-Tribune.

Scearce’s name had appeared in the newspaper more than 20 times related to squabbles with Ingram before the November meeting, Piasta said, adding that Scearce did not lose his job and was still an elected member of the county Department of Social Services board.

More damaging to Scearce’s reputation than the photo, Piasta argued, has been Scearce’s own conduct in the board meetings and online.

Piasta referenced Scearce’s nickname for Ingram, “der kleine Fuhrer Ingram,” which translates to “the little dictator” and compares Ingram to Adolf Hitler, Piasta argued. Scearce uses this nickname on Facebook and in conversation, according to his own testimony.

Scearce said that the result of the trial was “exactly what I was looking for” in an interview after the verdict.

“The money was never an issue for me,” Scearce said. “I offered to settle this out of court. All I wanted was an apology. … I guess this is my apology.”

Scearce said he will still be critical of board members during meetings when he feels they are doing something detrimental to the residents of the county.

Ingram said that he is glad that the matter is behind him and that he thinks the verdict was fair.

“I respect the jury’s decision,” he said in an interview. “I felt that what I did at the time was legal and permissible. Looking back in retrospect, I wish I could do it all over again, but I can’t. So all I can do is move forward.”

He said he hopes that future board meetings are focused primarily on the county, rather than on conflicts like this.

“It shouldn’t be about me and the Scearce brothers,” Ingram said. “I’m there to serve this county that I love dearly.”

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