Legal Question in Civil Rights Law in Virginia

Curious About Libel or Other Pertaining Laws

Hello,

I'm thinking about starting up a website, serving the purpose of protecting our children in the classroom (elementary school through college), from indoctrination and the suppression of their constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech.

The website would allow users to upload stories/complaints about an experience with a teacher, so that others might be forewarned before taking them or having their children take them. The site would allow the name of the teacher, school of employment (including city/state), department he/she works in, the class he/she teaches, and any required reading material. They would also have the option of uploading a video/audio/image file to use as proof of their claim.

Can you tell me if this type of site would be subjected to lawsuits in regards to libel/defamation of character of the teachers? Are there any other legal troubles that might arise from this, that the person running this site could run into? How about the users uploading the information?

Thanks very much for your time.


Asked on 2/19/09, 9:46 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Michael Hendrickson Law Office Michael E. Hendrickson

Re: Curious About Libel or Other Pertaining Laws

I regret to opine that this is a fundamentally dumb idea and one that you should urgently constrain yourself to avoid at all costs for nearly numberless reasons, beginning with the first and foremeost: YOUR PERSONAL LIABILIY, which undoubtedly would be put at high risk from the operation of such a scheme.

The protection of school children(not necessarily for the reasons you've suggsted), while laudable as a general idea, would not and could not be advanced by this scheme which you've proposed, and rather than solving perceived problems for school children, would without a doubt merely create many more for them, not to mention their teachers and schools----as well as for yourself.

There's enough disarray and turmoil already going on in many of our schools today without further exacerbation of the situation via external Internet meddling by well meaning but extremely ill-advised outsiders.

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Answered on 2/20/09, 9:53 am


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