A post from Brienne Allan's Instagram account during her time sharing stories of sexual harassment, assault, and more. Courtesy of Brienne Allan.
Update 5/18: Jacob McKean, founder and CEO of San Diego’s Modern Times Beer, has stepped down from his role with the company. The announcement came after allegations against the brewery—and McKean specifically—that were shared to Instagram as part of a large-scale #MeToo outpouring of abuse and misconduct claims within the beer industry. Modern Times was alleged to have fostered a hostile work environment for people of color, and employee Derek Freese was alleged to have grabbed a person’s crotch. Brewbound reported on May 18 that Freese had been terminated. In announcing his departure, McKean wrote, in part: “I am stepping down from my role as CEO, and we will begin a formal search for new company leadership. In order to navigate us out of this extremely difficult moment, we need leadership with the skill and experience to handle it effectively. It's time for a change.”
On the afternoon of May 11, Brienne Allan asked a question via her Instagram Stories: Had other people in the brewing industry experienced sexism? Allan, the production manager at Notch Brewing in Salem, Massachusetts, wasn’t prepared for the number and depth of responses she received, which now total more than 800. Stories of women sharing how they were told they weren’t strong enough to lift kegs quickly turned into allegations of sexual harassment, racism, and sexual assault.
After Allan herself posted a story that read: “Shaun Hill [of Hill Farmstead Brewery] told his brewer he set up the couch in his Airbnb to fuck me on after [beer festival] Pils and Love two years ago,” people began sending her stories that named people in the beer industry and/or the brewery where they work. (Hill gave a lengthy statement to VinePair that reads, in part: “I surely have a different perspective on what has been shared both overtly and anonymously, but what matters is how each person sees it.”) Other brewers and owners, including Søren Wagner of Dry & Bitter in Gørløse, Denmark and Jean Broillet IV of Tired Hands Brewing Company in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, were also named in numerous allegations; Wagner is now on a leave of absence from Dry & Bitter and Broillet has temporarily stepped away from Tired Hands. Someone whose identity GBH could not verify has created a document listing breweries mentioned in Allan’s Instagram Stories.
“The second I did that [named Hill], it opened the floodgates to people calling other people out like, ‘You fucking did this to me,’” Allan tells GBH. “People felt so comfortable to tell me whatever they wanted because they saw how anonymous it was. They’re like, ‘This is my trauma and I don’t really give a shit who knows about it now.’”
Allan has collected these mostly anonymous accounts via a collection of Instagram Stories on the social media platform. They range from anecdotes of unwanted advances and gender-based jokes to sexual assault. In a matter of days it became one of the most significant #MeToo reckonings for the brewing industry, and it’s far from over.
“All of a sudden I had 100 messages and no matter how many I answered it kept saying there were over 100 and I haven’t been able to get it under since then,” Allan says.
As the stories Allan has posted send shockwaves through the industry, they’ve also put her in legally uncertain territory. She says she’s received threats of lawsuits from individuals named in the stories she shared. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the response, Allan says she is considering whether she needs to “put in notice” with her supervisors at Notch Brewing to take time to process these events and take stock of her emotional and legal vulnerabilities.
“I’m in panic mode all day,” Allan says. “I can’t get anything done.”
On May 16, freelance social media manager Mikaelaa Crist created a GoFundMe to collect donations for costs associated with any legal defense Allan might have to mount as a result of her posts. Allan says she did not ask Crist to do so, and also says she likely doesn’t need the money but would share it with women who came forward to her, if they were sued as a result of the Instagram Stories. The GoFundMe has raised more than $15,000 as of May 18.
Allan says she’s made no attempts to verify the accuracy of any of the claims she’s shared. She says wives of people accused in her stories have contacted her and accused her of ruining their families, and Noble Ale Works in Anaheim, California threatened her with a defamation lawsuit.
“I’m like, ‘You guys, this is not my responsibility,’ but I guess it is now,” she says. “When people started naming names, that’s when I knew it was going to get out of control.”
Allan says despite watching this spiral into something beyond what she expected, she’s continued because of the positive effect sharing these stories has had for the people who have told them. For Allan, it’s been “liberating” for survivors of abuse or harassment to finally feel heard. “People are listening,” she says.
While some individual people named in accounts shared with Allan feel they’ve been defamed, the legal reality is an open question. To prove defamation, an individual would need to show that the allegations submitted to Allan were false, and that they were harmed as a result of these allegations. Defamation charges are often criminal, not civil, so if convicted, a defendant can face jail time.
Under the Communications Decency Act, specifically Section 230, users and providers of internet services are generally protected from defamation claims when they post or share content that was created by a third party. That’s according to Michael K. Twersky, a Philadelphia-based attorney at the law firm Fox Rothschild who regularly represents the press, media, and internet companies in defamation lawsuits and related cases. If a person retweets or shares a piece of defamatory content without editing it significantly, they’re generally protected from defamation claims as long as they didn’t create the content themselves.
But, he adds, “Anybody who posts something defamatory could still be liable for that defamatory content if they created that defamatory content. If the content contains false statements of fact that cause harm, the creator could be liable.”
Twersky didn’t comment on these issues as they relate to Allan’s case in particular, but it’s logical to assume that when Allan shared other people’s messages, she is likely not liable for defamation under Section 230 protections. However, in the instances of Stories that she herself shared, there’s greater potential that she is. There are also murky definitions of what is considered original content: Precedent states that editing content for length or clarity, or adding a headline, isn’t considered original content. But once a person begins adding commentary to someone else’s content, the line is less clear. (Twersky also notes that just because a defamation case doesn’t have much merit doesn’t mean someone can’t still file it.)
“I have tons of breweries reaching out to me and calling me, I have friends calling me, telling me their side of the story as if I’m the person accusing them,” Allan says. “I basically told everyone online two days ago: If there’s a story about you on here and you don’t want it up, just tell me and I’ll take it down.”
If she’s received similar stories from multiple people about a particular brewery or person, though, Allan says she considers them “probably fucking true.” She says she believes the person who is alleging abuse, but would be willing to take a story down because that survivor’s story is already out there. Allan says she’s received requests from Amsterdam’s Oedipus Brewing; Wiley Roots Brewing Company in Greeley, Colorado; and Birrificio Italiano in northern Italy asking her to take down stories. Even when she does take down a particular story, she says, “10,000 people have already fucking seen it and taken screenshots of it so it’s not going anywhere.”
Much of libel and defamation law also hinges on whether the content shared amounts to discussion of a public issue, or of private matters, according to Craig LaMay, a professor of media law and ethics at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications. Topics of public relevance generally have more protection against defamation claims than private ones do: Calling the President a murderer on the internet, for example, is less legally dangerous than saying the same about your next-door neighbor, who is not a public figure.
That’s because public figures generally need to show that the person who defamed them acted with “actual malice,” a legal term that means the person making claims about someone knows or has good reason to believe the claims are false, but publishes them anyway. That would essentially amount to making up a lie or hearing what you know to be a lie and publishing it as fact.
In the United States, case law has rendered the actual malice standard "a rigorous, if not impossible, burden to meet in most circumstances,” as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court put it in a 2007 ruling.
It’s not clear whether brewers mentioned by name in the stories people have shared with Allan amount to public figures. For some of the most well-known examples—who have appeared in magazines, newspapers, or on TV, and are considered fixtures of the craft beer industry—the scales may tip in favor of their legal status as public figures, though that’s hardly a certainty.
That Allan is sharing people’s stories in the wake of the #MeToo movement is also legally important. Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws in many states are designed to prevent lawsuits people file, often frivolously, with the intent to shut down discussion on public issues. Basically, these laws—which do not exist at the federal level—prevent people from suing others just to discourage them from speaking critically about public issues. LaMay says the #MeToo movement has transformed conduct that might have formerly been considered private into issues of public interest.
“The question is: Are these public issues or are they private actions?” LaMay says of the stories people shared with Allan. “I think I could make a pretty good case there’s a larger public issue here given the #MeToo movement.”
For now, Allan hasn’t received anything more than the threat of a lawsuit. She has heard from several lawyers, though, who tell her a defamation suit against her would have little merit. A few lawyers have offered to represent her for free if she were sued.
Legal culpability and morality are, of course, two distinct realms. And the emotional or psychological toll of the past week is affecting Allan, exclusive of any legal questions. She says there’s no possible outcome—legal or professional—for alleged abusers that would truly make her happy.
“As much as these people probably deserve what’s coming to them, I don’t ever want anyone, no matter how awful they are, to feel bad,” she says. “So I definitely have this insane guilt of like, outing people on the internet. That wasn’t my intention in any way. So I don’t think anything positive is going to happen for me from this but I hope some people get justice for what happened to them.”
Allan says that in cases where a person or brewery was named repeatedly by numerous people, she hopes some consequences come of it. This tension—the desire to share survivors’ stories, but also guilt about the fallout—might seem contradictory, but human emotions around abuse are rarely black-and-white. Allan is a part of the industry that she’s exposing; her friends and colleagues work at some of these breweries. All of this creates dissonance. Summarizing the last week for her, Allan calls it “traumatic.”
Going forward, she hopes to connect people who shared stories about the same brewery or person to “try to figure out that whole story and what to do next about that situation.” She also plans to meet with the presidents of various chapters of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas (MBAA), because at least one person claims to have been assaulted by a brewer at one of the MBAA’s meetings (that story, which Allan shared, also mentions the brewer was subsequently fired from his job).
Like Allan, other groups are seizing on this moment to make change. They include Crafted for All, a consulting firm and professional development platform which is planning a working happy hour to discuss issues raised this week, as well as Burum Collective, a U.K.-based drinks industry network that is planning its own meeting regarding the news.
Allan says though she didn’t intend to create a reckoning moment for the entire industry, she is encouraged by the majority of the response she’s received.
“All of the messages of people thanking me and how I’m like, changing their lives for the better… it seems like it was going to be so progressive and I do believe it is,” she says. “But I think there are going to be a lot of repercussions for people who don’t deserve it, too.”
Words by Kate Bernot
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