Environmental activist Meg Sheehan says A.D. Makepeace employees were behind a Facebook page called “Meg Costs Us Millions,” where anonymous critics bullied and berated her for more than a year.
In new court filings, Sheehan alleges that the company’s in-house lawyer was the page’s administrator and that at least one other Makepeace employee may have authored some other online attacks.
In her 117-page suit filed in September, she claims 10 defendants, including Plymouth and Carver town officials, defamed and hurt her — but at the time she didn’t know the identity of the people behind the online attacks.
She wanted to unmask these individuals so she could decide whether to add more defendants to her lawsuit, or new allegations against the existing defendants, she wrote.
Sheehan – who did not respond to requests for comment for this story – says she only recently learned that Meg Costs Us Millions was the creation of a Makepeace official.
The company calls itself the largest private landowner in Massachusetts and one of the largest cranberry growers in the world. Makepeace also developed the Redbrook development in South Plymouth.
In her suit filed in September, Sheehan accused the defendants of violating her constitutional rights by harassing and demeaning what she called her “entirely altruistic” work on behalf of grassroots groups and residents battling the illegal removal of sand, a valuable natural resource.
Besides Makepeace and its chief executive officer, James Kane, Sheehan is suing the towns of Plymouth and Carver; Michael Main, chair of the Plymouth Zoning Board of Appeals; and Betty Cavacco former chair of the Select Board and now a member of the Community Preservation Committee.
The remaining defendants are Alan Germain, who is the Carver town moderator and owner of a trucking company; Stephen Gray, chair of the Carver Zoning Board of Appeals; and SLT Construction and its president Peter Opachinski.
She is seeking $20 million in damages. In addition to violating her constitutional rights, Sheehan accuses the defendants of libel, slander, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Sheehan said she has been insulted and ridiculed by Plymouth and Carver town officials at public meetings.
Especially concerning, her lawsuit says, were the vicious and “libelous” online attacks posted by “digital impersonators.”
The Meg Costs Us Millions Facebook page – which is no longer active – was created in January 2023, she wrote in the suit, “to ridicule and demean” her and “to libel and smear her reputation.”
Posters called her names like “old crone” or “the second coming of Cruela De Vil” and photoshopped her “attractive face to make her unattractive and unappealing” by adding a bulbous clown’s nose, the suit says.
Sheehan said in court papers that she spent months trying to discover who created the Facebook page. It disappeared shortly after she filed suit in September.
She subpoenaed records of Facebook, X, and Comcast, which in January traced Meg Costs Us Millions back to the Makepeace lawyer, court documents said.
She did not identify Michael McVeigh by name, but in company documents, he is identified as Makepeace’s in-house attorney.
The company’s outside counsel, Geoffrey Raux, acknowledged the Makepeace official’s involvement, according to Sheehan’s lawyer, Joan Lukey, saying he had “set up and administered certain social media pages alleged in the complaint.”
The lawyer is still employed by the company, which denies responsibility for his conduct, Lukey wrote in a Feb. 25 letter to the judge, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs.
In a March 14 filing, Raux said only that an employee of Makepeace “might have been involved.”
Sheehan also alleges the Makepeace in-house lawyer also posted under the name Rebecca Newhouse, and that another, yet unnamed, Makepeace employee may have been the author of posts under the name of TJ Strongbow.
Other defendants also posted derogatory comments online but used their own names.
In February, Sheehan requested the judge’s permission to question three senior Makepeace executives — McVeigh, Kane and vice president Linda Burke — along with the company’s outside counsel, Michael Crossen.
Makepeace lawyers opposed the request in court papers, calling it “a brazen attempt to harass and intimidate.”
The defendants have asked the judge to rule first on their motions to dismiss so they may be spared “extensive and costly discovery” – including the taking of depositions – before the judge has ruled which, if any, parts of the lawsuit can move forward.
Burke, who is Makepeace’s spokesperson, declined comment on Sheehan’s allegation, citing the pending litigation.
Andrew Paven, a longtime public relations professional, said Makepeace may have hurt its own cause if it created anonymous posts targeting Sheehan.
“They had reason to take issue with her public statements that weren’t based on fact, especially if the statements negatively affected their business,” said Paven in an emailed statement.
“But having employees create fake social media accounts isn’t the way to do that. They’ve created their own problem and elevated their critic’s position,” he said.
All the defendants have filed motions to dismiss — Plymouth and Carver filed together.
In their motion filed on Feb. 21, lawyers for Plymouth and Carver called Sheehan’s allegations “meandering and at times incomprehensible.”
Her claims that the towns, municipal officials, private companies and private citizens engaged in a “sprawling conspiracy to deprive her of her rights to advocate against sand removal … to use an apt allegory, are built on castles in the sky,” wrote the lawyers, Joseph Padolsky and Adam Simms.
The towns have certain immunity, as do town officials in a more limited way, the lawyers wrote.
And they have done nothing to prevent Sheehan from fighting for her clients, they wrote.
“She has been undeterred in her pursuit of relief,” the lawyers wrote. She can argue cases and appeal any decision she disputes.
To win another of her claims — intentional infliction of emotional distress — the alleged behavior must be “extreme and outrageous,” the towns’ lawyers wrote.
“The alleged misconduct consists of nothing more than mere insults, indignities, threats, annoyances, petty oppressions,” the towns’ lawyers wrote.
In Makepeace’s motion to dismiss, its lawyers argued that Sheehan has engaged in an “organized campaign” to hurt the company’s business and “to halt economic development by Makepeace and other businesses
“Despite filing a 117-page complaint, plaintiff has shown no substance undergirding her sundry causes of action,” Raux wrote.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.