Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

I attended a nursing school and i graduated last dec. The school program was only supposed to be for 12 months but it ended up being for 16 months. At the time our school director had many issues with keeping staff as well as classes being cancelled for many unkown reasons. I have just recently had my paper work sent to the board of nurses so that i can take my state exam to become an lpn. It was a very lenghty process to get my paper work forwarded. Our class had to do a series of exit exams and score higher than the state reccomended score. The Owner and director of the school constantly changed the schools contracts making up things as she went along. She had our class mates sign to many of these changes that she made. Just recently I saw that our school was in the antelope valley times news paper. A close friend of my mother had informed me to get the paper. She told me that my former school was in the paper for loss of accredation as well as three former students that are not from my class were suing the owner and director of the school. These students were suing because they paid for a course that was not yet approved by the state stated the paper. As well as them not having enough school supplies and that classes were cancelled for random reasons. The news paper article also had the day that these students would be attending court this month. I sent five of my former classmates and two or my former teachers a text message stating that its now 10pm and that the news paper will be off the stands at 12am and that its an article of the school losing there accredation in 2010 and being sued by 3 former students and they should get the paper. After reading the paper for myself after sending the text messages i see that the school is accredated they just were not approved to have the l.v.n course at that time. The students in the article had already paid ther money just to find out thta the course was not approved. Some one must must of forwarded my text message. The next day i have a missed call from the owner and director of the school. I chose not to answer that call. Later on i get a call from my school offering free a nclex class. I also did not answer this call. The next day i get a text message from the owner and director of the school stating. "I got your text message that you sent every one. Thanks for the love for you info our school never lost accredation in 2010. That text is slander. Your text is also slander. Yes that student wom a partial for not attending the course. That story will be retracted since it was false". I did not reply to this text message. Three days later i get a letter in the mail from the owner/directors attorney stating that i need to cease and desist this matter. That i have caused lots of harm to the owner and that since my message it has affected her business. The letter also stated for the past two years i have talked about her personel life and spread rumors. The letter also said that i was the source of the newspaper article. The article says the names of the sources involved. All of thoes statements made are false. I never wrote the article. The only thing that i did do was post an anonymous review on google about the school and its low test rates. I posted a link also in my reveiw to the staes website showing that the scores were in fact low. I even used a fake screen name and everything so there is no way that it can be traced back to me. In the letter i received it says that she wants me to write a written retraction of all of my statements and that i give her a list of everyone that i sent the text messages to. She is giving me 10 days to write a retraction. What would you suggest i do? I dont want to admit guilt to things that i did not do. I am not the source of the newspaper article!


Asked on 10/31/11, 11:06 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
George Shers Law Offices of Georges H. Shers

You probably should have responded to earlier communications so that it did not go this far. Slander is what is said, libel is what can be read [i.e., "eye"]. If you merely said something of the order of "here is an article saying they lost their accreditation" but did not say that you knew they had or directly state they had, then that is merely passing on public information and not a statement of fact. Defamation requires that you state as your belief that something did in fact occur;

As a matter of caution, you should inform the people you e-mailed that the article was incorrect and send a copy of the e-mail [probably not showing to whom the message was sent] to the school owner. You should tell them that you consulted with an attorney and what you did was not considered as defamatory, you feel her behavior is heavy handed [expressions of opinion are always protected as they truly state what you think and do not state that something is a fact] and tell her what was wrong with how the school ran its programs and that it cost you four months of employment.

Read more
Answered on 11/01/11, 1:08 pm


Related Questions & Answers

More General Civil Litigation questions and answers in California