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COLUMBIA, S.C. (Legal Newsline) - A teacher who claims school administrators engaged in a civil conspiracy to have her fired for reporting a student to the police will have another shot at proving her case after the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned its own precedent.
The decision drew criticism from one justice who said that by correcting one problem, the state’s high court may have created a larger one by leaving jurors free to impose liability on defendants based solely on their “own sense of fairness and right and wrong.”
Leisel Paradis sued the Charleston County School District, a high school and two administrators claiming she was given an unsatisfactory performance evaluation and ultimately fired for reporting a student’s classroom misconduct to police. She sued for defamation and civil conspiracy, but the district and appeals court dismissed her conspiracy claims because she failed to plead “special damages” arising specifi