Thalhimer files response to Flying Squirrels owner’s defamation lawsuit

In a formal response filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Thursday, Thalhimer Realty Partners denied that its principal, Jason Guillot, told city officials that Richmond Flying Squirrels owner Lou DiBella threatened to kill Guillot and his family.

That claim is at the heart of a defamation lawsuit filed by DiBella in federal court and seeking “tens of millions of dollars” from Guillot and Thalhimer Realty Partners.

DiBella — managing partner of Navigators Baseball, the limited partnership that owns the Double-A minor league Flying Squirrels — has been “locked in contentious business dealings” with Guillot and Thalhimer for years, according to DiBella’s May 28 suit. The Squirrels’ new stadium, CarMax Park, is the centerpiece of the city of Richmond’s $2.4 billion Diamond District redevelopment project headed up by Thalhimer.

In the response filing, Guillot and Thalhimer formally “decline the factual allegations in the first paragraph of the Complaint, and they specifically deny that Guillot made the alleged defamatory statement.” That paragraph claimed Guillot told Richmond Economic Development Authority Director Angie Rodgers that DiBella “threatened to kill Guillot and his family if Guillot did not sell DiBella a certain parcel of land.”

Guillot and Thalhimer’s formal response includes a signed declaration from Rodgers, stating that Guillot “never represented to me that Lou DiBella ‘threatened to kill Guillot and his family if Guillot did not sell DiBella’” the parcel at issue.

Rodgers further declared that she did not represent in a later conversation with DiBella that Guillot had made the allegation.

The initial suit centers around a conversation that DiBella claimed occurred on April 7, the opening night of CarMax Park.

During a conversation between DiBella and Guillot with DiBella’s business partner, Larry Botel, present, DiBella brought up his concerns regarding a 0.8-acre parcel near the stadium and other concerns, according to DiBella’s lawsuit. The lawsuit claims that Guillot “responded with petty insults” and “continued in a diatribe against DiBella.”

As DiBella was leaving the conversation, according to the lawsuit, Guillot allegedly asked, “What, are you going to hit me?” DiBella says in the lawsuit that he responded, “Of course not, I would never do that. But if I did hit you, I’d hit you so hard, I’d hurt your whole family.”

DiBella’s suit says the last sentence was “an approximate quote from one of his favorite movies,” the 1982 comedy-drama “Diner,” and that DiBella “intended this as a joke.” (The actual quote from the movie is “I’ll hit you so hard, I’ll kill your whole family.”)

An April memo on Diamond District Partners letterhead from Guillot was included in the response filings, which does not mention the language from DiBella’s suit.

DiBella’s lawsuit claims Rodgers called DiBella on April 9 and said Guillot had told her he “threatened to kill Guillot and his family if Guillot did not sell DiBella the 0.8-acre parcel.” Rodgers denied this in her court declaration.

The response filing calls DiBella’s complaint “baseless, and it is really an attempt to use the shield of judicial privilege to defame Guillot and intimidate various City officials into renegotiating certain terms of the development deal.”

At issue in the dispute is a 0.8-acre parcel among the 67-acre Diamond District. DiBella’s lawsuit states that the city and EDA kept the parcel when giving the Squirrels land for the stadium after DiBella proposed the Squirrels’ ownership build the stadium themselves. The city and EDA allegedly said the parcel was “earmarked for an ‘African American-owned food court’” that wouldn’t be a competitor to the Squirrels’ concessions and was needed to satisfy a requirement that 40% of the district be reserved for minority businesses.

According to the lawsuit, former Squirrels executive Todd Parnell told DiBella and Botel that he’d learned from a Thalhimer-affiliated broker that Thalhimer planned to put a sports bar named after him on the 0.8-acre parcel, which would directly compete with the Squirrels. A Thalhimer broker confirmed to the Squirrels’ broker that the firm was close to finalizing a deal for a 15,000-square-foot sports bar, according to the suit.

Guillot and Thalhimer wrote in their response that Parnell “approached Defendants as early as May 2024 about potentially opening a sports bar called ‘Parney’s Pub’ on the parcel in question.”

“Specifically, this lawsuit is DiBella’s latest effort to pressure Defendants into selling DiBella a prime parcel of property adjacent to CarMax Park that the City conveyed to Diamond District Partners, LLC in March 2025 in accordance with the parties’ development deal,” Guillot and Thalhimer wrote in their response.

Guillot and Thalhimer’s filing asks that DiBella’s suit be dismissed with prejudice, that they be awarded attorneys’ fees and costs for defending the lawsuit and that “such further relief as the Court deems just and proper” be granted.