Boy Sues Girl Over Alleged Defamation on Campus

In an unusual defamation case pitting high school classmates against one another, a Lancaster boy is suing a girl who reported to school officials that he had made threats in the days following the 1999 Columbine massacre.

The boy’s attorney, Brian Reed, said Thursday that his client was wrongfully accused by the girl and, as a result, was arrested and kicked out of school. His suit, filed in February in Antelope Valley Superior Court, seeks unspecified monetary damages.

In an interview this week, the 16-year-old defendant called the lawsuit “totally ridiculous.”

The legal brouhaha between teenagers who once sang together in choir class at Quartz Hill High School began in the spring of last year, just days after the Colorado school shootings, when campus tensions were running high.

One teenage boy allegedly was overheard threatening to blow up the Lancaster school. Another, to kill his classmates. Anxious school officials questioned students, looking to get to the bottom of it.

One of many students who reported on other classmates, the defendant told a school official that she heard the boy, a fellow freshman at the time, threaten her and others.

Eventually, three teenage boys were arrested on allegations ranging from making death threats to possessing an inert hand grenade. The plaintiff, who was not among those three boys, was arrested later and charged with intimidating a witness and disturbing school functions, according to his lawsuit.

The charges against him were later dropped, according to his lawsuit. School and law enforcement officials said they could not comment on the case because the boy is a minor. He and his family also declined comment.

In April 1999, according to both the boy’s lawsuit and the girl, she told school officials that she heard the boy say during class, “We’re sick of them. We’re going to kill people.”

Later that day, she told other students and school officials that the boy came up to her and said: “I’m going to get you. I’m going to get you.”

In an interview Wednesday, the girl said she was simply being responsible and reporting what she heard.

The boy denies making those statements. In the lawsuit, he alleges that his former classmate “intentionally defamed and slandered” him, and that she “made these statements because someone was pressuring her to make the statements even though the statements were incorrect.”

The boy contends that he was expelled because of the girl’s reports about his alleged threats. He appealed and the Los Angeles County Board of Education overruled the expulsion, said Reed. The lawsuit, which also names the girl’s parents as defendants, alleges that her statements humiliated the boy and caused him mental anguish.

In an interview, the girl’s mother said she was “absolutely floored” that her family could be sued because her daughter had done what she believed was “the right thing” in reporting threats to school officials. Her daughter, she added, is now on independent study and no longer attending Quartz Hill High because of stress.

Because of the dispute, the boy also has not returned to his old high school. His father declined to say where his son now attends school.

Larry Freise, the Quartz Hill vice principal at the time who questioned the girl and helped investigate the alleged threats, said he could not speak for the school or the Antelope Valley Union High School District, but that he personally believed she “did the right thing in reporting what she had heard.”

“The case against her, I think, is frivolous,” said Freise, who now works at the school district’s headquarters.

Other school officials declined to comment on the lawsuit. “If one student chooses to sue another student, that’s between them,” said Linda Solcich, spokeswoman for the district.

Solcich added that the boy had filed a claim for damages against the school district, but it was rejected. The six-month statute of limitations has already run out for him to sue the district, Solcich said.

In the meantime, the girl and her attorneys are trying, so far unsuccessfully, to get the school district to help her defense.

“If the school’s going to ask students for information, and a student gets sued, they should step up to the plate,” said attorney Scott Schutz.

Michael Kelly, who is also representing her, said the case “is going to have such a chilling effect on other kids” who report wrongdoing by fellow students.