Three of the defendants in a lawsuit filed by a Wilmington-based luxury homebuilder are seeking a motion to dismiss the case, according to court filings entered this week.

In June, attorneys for Mark Batson, owner of Tongue & Groove, filed a complaint in New Hanover County Superior Court alleging that he was the victim of a defamation campaign and other misconduct aimed at destroying his reputation and businesses.

Kenneth Edward Jeffries, Christopher Parker, Anthony James Kidd, Jason Ruegg, Ryan Marchi, Parker Construction Group, 360 Builders LLC and John Does 1-100 are listed as the defendants in Batson’s complaint.

N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby on July 2 designated the case as a mandatory complex business case to be heard in N.C. Business Court.

The brief filed Wednesday by an attorney for Jeffries, Kidd and 360 Builders LLC claims the case should be dismissed for multiple reasons, many of them related to what the brief says are a lack of specifics and invalid arguments.

According to a June news release from the office of Batson’s attorneys, the defendants are “competing builders and associated individuals,” and the filing states they “undertook a coordinated effort to undermine” Batson and his companies. 

“Batson asserts that defendants, unable to compete on the business merits, engaged in a multi-pronged attack including a slander campaign, dissemination of false statements, and use of AI-generated imagery accusing Batson of having extramarital sex with clients at the clients’ homes,” Batson’s attorneys said in the release.

The June complaint also alleges that defendants spread lies “through multiple channels,” including texting, social media, word-of-mouth and AI-generated imagery.

According to this week's dismissal request brief and a cited precedent, the court “is not required 'to accept as true allegations that are merely conclusory, unwarranted deductions of fact, or unreasonable inferences.'"

One example included in the defendants’ brief, filed by Raleigh-based attorney Walter Tippett Jr. of Williams Mullen, states that under North Carolina law, a claimant “‘must recite the defamatory statement verbatim or with sufficient particularity to enable the court to determine whether the statement was defamatory.’”

In another portion, the brief states that Batson’s complaint “does not identify to whom Jeffries or Kidd allegedly published their defamatory statements. Plaintiffs rely on vague allegations that Defendants ‘trafficked’ rumors, the rumors spread ‘quickly’ to others or that ‘hundreds of people heard and spread the false rumors’ – without identifying any specific information about how the rumors spread and to whom.”

The brief does not acknowledge any wrongdoing on the part of the defendants. In response to questions from the Business Journal immediately after Batson’s attorneys filed the complaint in June, three of the defendants – Jeffries, Marchi and Ruegg – told the Business Journal that they deny Batson’s allegations.

Parker, Parker Construction Group LLC and Ruegg have been granted more time to respond to the June complaint by Batson but had not yet done so as of Friday, according to electronic court filings. Marchi accepted service of the civil summons and complaint through his attorney on July 2. Defendants have 30 days to respond after receiving or accepting service unless granted an extension.

In the dismissal motion brief from Jeffries’ and Kidd’s attorney, the defendants claim that “a statement that Mark performed oral sex on a male client and photos allegedly depicting Mark as a homosexual do not impeach him (or, by extension, any other Plaintiff) in his profession because neither statement is an indictment on Mark’s ability to design and construct multi-million-dollar homes.”

The brief also states that the “Plaintiffs did not allege that Defendants defamed Mark by spreading rumors that, for example, he was embezzling money from clients or using shoddy construction materials to build luxury homes … Instead, Defedants’ alleged defamatory statements are entirely personal in nature and do not touch Mark in his profession as a luxury home builder.”

According to Batson’s June complaint, Jeffries is a former client of Batson’s who owns Ken Jeffries & Associates, a Morrisville-based marketing firm. It alleges that Jeffries teamed up with Kidd, one of Tongue & Groove’s employees, to form Jeffries + Kidd Design Build, a company intended as “a direct competitor” of Tongue & Groove. 360 Builders is a North Carolina limited liability company doing business as Jeffries + Kidd Design Build.

The complaint accuses Kidd of violating an employment agreement with Tongue & Groove that contains a noncompete clause. It also states that Kidd and Jeffries poached six of Tongue & Groove’s employees and alleges that they stole trade secrets from Batson’s company.

According to the motion dismissal brief filed by Tippett on behalf of Jeffries, Kidd and 360 Builders, the timing and region in Kidd’s noncompete clause can’t be deemed reasonable. 

Additionally, Batson’s complaint doesn’t identify specific contractual opportunities that Batson’s companies lost “as a result of the 360 Builders Defendants’ misconduct,” the brief states.

The brief also says that in the plaintiffs’ claim of the misappropriation of trade secrets, they failed to specifically identify any trade secret, failed to allege the specific acts of misappropriation and failed “to identify reasonable steps Plaintiffs took to ensure the secrecy of the alleged trade secrets.”

Tippett declined to comment on the brief Friday. Patrick Mincey, one of Batson’s attorneys with the Mincey Bell Rhoades law firm, stated Friday, “We will respond with our own filings in due course and expect to name more defendants.”

According to N.C. Business Court rules, a plaintiff must file a response to a dismissal motion brief within 20 days of being served.