MAINE
Portland Press Herald

BY SCOTT DOLAN STAFF WRITER
sdolan@pressherald.com | @scottddolan | 207-791-6304

While Freeport resident Paul Kendrick appeals a $14.5 million verdict against him in a complex defamation case, a federal judge held an unusual hearing Friday in which he encouraged the two sides to reach an out-of-court settlement instead.

Kendrick lost at trial in U.S. District Court in Portland last summer, but an appellate court in Boston issued a ruling last month that put the entire case in question by asking whether it ever belonged in federal court at all.

The appellate ruling raised so many new questions that Judge John A. Woodcock Jr., who presided over the trial, ordered all parties in the case to appear before him again on Friday.

Kendrick was accused of defamation after he began a widely broadcast email campaign in January 2011 in which he accused the American founder…