Nonprofit status doesn’t preclude economic damages

The nonprofit status of a chamber of commerce does not mean that it cannot suffer economic damages, a federal District Court in Oregon has held.  It has refused to dismiss a claim for intentional interference with economic relations and libel against a lawyer and his law firm that claimed the chamber, by its very nature as a nonprofit, could not suffer economic harm.

The defendants “have failed to provide any persuasive authority for this novel proposition,” the Court said, “and I decline to accept it.”