The director of a school for autistic children has dropped her lawsuit against former employees who reported her for injuring a student in her care.
According to official records, the case began when an administrator at Insightful Minds Community of Learning banished a student to a seclusion room to correct his behavior. While in the room, the student propped a mat up against the wall and climbed on top of it. The boy refused to come down when asked, so the adminstrator simply yanked the mat out from under him, forcing the boy to fall to the floor, where he injured his arm.
Teachers in the building saw surveillance video of the incident and reported it to the school’s owner, the police, and the boy’s mother. Based on those reports, the administrator sued the whistleblowers, alleging they had defamed her and inflicted her with severe emotional distress.
Two of the whistleblowers retained Speech Law LLC to defend against the claims. The firm mounted an aggressive defense, serving extensive discovery requests picking apart her denials of the truth captured on camera, her claims that she had suffered reputational damage, and her allegations of severe emotional distress.
When the administrator failed to answer virtually all of the whistleblowers’ discovery requests, Speech Law demanded that she sit for a deposition, but she voluntarily dismissed her case instead.
“Defamation cases like this are almost always frivolous, but there are always people who can’t resist the temptation of smearing someone else to cover up their own wrongdoing. Unfortunately, there are a lot of lawyers willing to make a buck going along for the ride,” said Brian D. Bardwell, who represented the teachers. “Anyone hit with a lawsuit like this needs to be careful to make sure they don’t fall into any of the procedural traps that can prevent them from beating these claims back.”
Although the First Amendment’s strong protections for free speech render the vast majority of defamation claims frivolous, successfully asserting and proving those First Amendment defenses requires careful planning and argument. If you’ve received a cease-and-desist letter or been served with a defamation lawsuit, call Speech Law to start making a plan to put those allegations to rest.