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Charter School Firm Attacks Online Criticism

Posted by timothy on from the so-here's-some-more dept.

Lane writes "News-Press.com reports that 'Charter Schools USA is threatening legal action against parents who use an Internet discussion board to air grievances about Gateway Charter.'" This despite comments which the parents say are based on the public record, and posted anonymously.

3 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Re:true tort reform. by Compulawyer · · Score: 4, Informative
    "Real" cease and desist letters place a potential defendant on notice that a potential plaintiff considers the actions of the potential defendant to be illegal or more specifically, a violation of the rights of the potential plaintiff and/or causing the potential plaintill harm. This has the legal effect of supplying notice to a potential defendant.

    With some causes of action, if a potential plaintiff continues the conduct after having been explicitly notified, and if that action is deemed illegal, the defendant can be held to have acted willfully. In most cases, willful conduct results in greatly increased damages. In just about all cases, willful conduct looks very bad to a jury.

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    Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.

  2. Charter Schools USA, 20 second judgement by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Informative
    No link to them, so I went and had a look. They're definitely in the education business, that's for sure. Their site starts cheerful enough with the reaching kid graphic and Putting Children First sm slogan. Strangely, their mission and who we are pages don't mention much about kids after that. The Starting a Charter School makes my eyes glaze over.

    I have no idea of how good they are as schools, do they have a political leaning, or anything like that. If I was a parent, I'd probably ask some questions too. Definitely an Edu-Corp.

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    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  3. Re:So much for freedom of speech by Entrope · · Score: 4, Informative

    Where does due process come into the picture? (Answer: it doesn't, since due process is about a person being able to protect himself against one-sided legal action.) The Constitution provides no penalties for libel, and corporations generally have as little ground as public figures do when it comes to making defamation claims. The joke has a nugget of truth in that in America, everything that is not prohibited is permitted.

    You also confuse the company's claim that the posts are defamatory with that actually being the case. Since the company refused to identify -- even as an example -- any post on the site that was defamatory, I doubt even they believe they have a case that would stand up in court. They just want to scare people into compliance.