Refer them to the reply given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).
A school described by parents as a ‘North Korean gulag’ for making pupils walk silently between lessons has now hired lawyers to threaten a mother with legal action over a series of Facebook posts.
Susan Hunter, whose 15-year-old son Cameron attends the Birmingham school, received a letter from solicitors Irwin Mitchell insisting she take down posts criticising the school’s policy and its CEO Catherine Anwar – and that she apologise to all her followers in words ‘to be agreed with the school’.
What? Seriously?
Okay, you might take the line that the school operates its rules and that is that. Fair enough, their gaff and all that. However, parents should be equally free to talk about it and criticise. That freedom of speech thing. Getting the lawyers in is heavy-handed. Also, they seem to have been making an effort to find her comments.
My Facebook is shut down and is private. And the Anti-Academies Alliance group on Facebook is a closed group so they must have searched for the comment.
Which is interesting. They are claiming that the comments are defamatory. However, criticism is not defamatory and they seem to have misinterpreted comments regarding Childline. It’s difficult without seeing all of the material to make a judgement, but my gut feeling here is a school using heavy-handed tactics to silence a critic. Not least, they appear to have things wrong:
Lawyers also highlight one comment on Facebook in which they appear to misinterpret the weight consultant, who wrote: “I volunteered at childline for a year, I heard some horrendous things from kids.
“This can of worms that’s been opened re Ninestiles is getting worse and worse.
“Aren’t schools supposed to be safe environments for our kids?!?!”
The lawyers had missed off the question mark, two-thirds of the original post and incorrectly claimed Ms Hunter was referring to “kids” from Ninestiles having called Childline.
Given this and that Ms Hunter claims that all her comments are supported by evidence, I’d respond with the Arkell v Pressdram reply.
Lawyers need to think carefully before taking instructions which would lead to them being even lower in public regard. As the school will have been charged for the legal response, that money could have been spent on education.
A better response looks like this:
Dear Ms Anwar
We have read the material provided and in our opinion, it is not defamatory and we would not advise any client to throw money away on a case which we could not win.
Sue Grabbit and Runne are not a group of thugs for hire; we do not lean on people for reward, and accept instructions only where we think that the interests of the client can be served best by a formal response. Often it cannot, or the response is outwith our area of expertise.
In this case, we think your best interests are served in educational terms, by communicating with the parent and not starting a fight which will do nothing but damage the reputation of the school and its relationship with a pupil and parents.
Thus, in your very best interests, we are mixing out and hope that you appreciate that this has already cost us money but we are giving you this advice for free, as a token of our integrity.
Yours…
Yes
If only Solicitors were honest and moral…
Fiona Onasanya, Anna Soubry, Blair Creature…
I see your point, but with anything that involves a mixture of scorned mothers and facebook, my gut instinct would be to believe the school on this one
True, public bodies don’t often back down gracefully, but to get the lawyers in, you’d think they have something
Not necessarily. Getting the lawyers in is usually the sign of a bully hoping to frighten people into submission. Indeed, the very fact they have done this leans me the other way.