By Jessica Dye

NEW YORK, Dec 12 (Reuters) - A unanimous New York appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a defamation claim brought by a man who said he was accused in an online post of throwing a severed horse head in a local politician's pool.

The Appellate Division, Second Department, found that a comment on a newspaper website accusing David LeBlanc of dumping a severed horse head in a local politician's swimming pool constituted defamation per se, and it said LeBlanc didn't need to show he had suffered monetary losses as a result of the statement.

The ruling partially reversed a 2011 decision and clears the way for LeBlanc to litigate the revived claim.

The case dates back to 2006, when Gail Soro, a member of the town board of Wawayanda, New York, discovered a severed horse head in her swimming pool, the ruling said.

The culprit was never found, but speculation ensued, given the "cinematic bravado" of the gesture, Justice Jeffrey Cohen of the Second Department wrote.

"While the discovery of any deliberately placed mutilated animal carcass in a family swimming pool would be shocking and noteworthy, the choice of a severed horse head immediately evokes to many the infamous scene from Mario Puzo's novel, 'The Godfather,' as immortalized in the film directed by Francis Ford Coppola," Cohen explained in a footnote.

In the film, Italian mafia try to intimidate a Hollywood producer by cutting off the head of a prized race horse and putting it in the producer's bed while he's asleep.

A year after the head was discovered, a comment was posted in a forum on the website of a local newspaper, the Times Herald-Record, accusing LeBlanc, a businessman who was active in local policy debates, of being behind the incident.

It was never determined who was responsible for the horse head, the ruling stated. The Orange County district attorney's office could not be reached Wednesday evening to confirm.

'DEFAMATION PER SE'

"We all know who was behind the Horse Head ... there is only one man around town dumb enough, violent enough and with a vendetta to do that ... Dave LeBlanc ... I hope all this negative publicity on him destroys his business," the comment on the website said, according to the ruling.

In 2008, LeBlanc sued former Wawayanda town supervisor Wayne Skinner and his wife, Karen Skinner, along with their nephew, Michael Hawkins, for defamation. The complaint alleged that they were responsible for the horse head comment, along with several other allegedly defamatory statements posted on local blogs and forums.

The Skinners moved for summary judgment, saying that LeBlanc had to prove that he suffered "special damages" -- economic or monetary losses -- to sustain two defamation claims related to the horse head comments.

Orange County Supreme Court Justice Elaine Slobod agreed and, in a 2011 ruling, granted the Skinners' motion and dismissed those two claims.

On appeal, LeBlanc cited New York state case law, which recognizes four kinds of statements that can qualify as defamation per se, without need to prove special damages. One of those, he said, is a statement that charges the plaintiff with a "serious crime."

In its ruling, the Second Department agreed that the forum post about the horse head incident constituted defamation per se.

"The published allegation that the plaintiff put a severed horse head in a Town Board member's swimming pool constituted defamation per se under this standard and, therefore, did not require the plaintiff to plead special damages," Cohen wrote for the court.

However, the court denied LeBlanc's motion to reinstate a second claim related to two additional comments on the newspaper site -- one that called LeBlanc a "terrorist" and another that asked, "Who was the one who threw the horse head in Gail's pool..." and directed the reader to a different blog post. Cohen wrote that the first comment was a statement of opinion, not fact, and LeBlanc was not clearly implicated in the second comment.

Cohen was joined by Justices Mark Dillon, Daniel Angiolillo and Anita Florio in the opinion.

A lawyer for LeBlanc could not be immediately reached for comment, and an attorney for the Skinners declined to comment Wednesday on the ruling.

The case is LeBlanc v. Skinner, New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, No. 2011-3120.

For LeBlanc: Moacyr Calhelha of Calhelha & Doyle.

For the Skinner defendants: Christopher Watkins of Sussman & Watkins.

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