By Gary Chester, Senior Writer
Hershey, Pennsylvania is known to tourists as the home of chocolate. But for Dr. Kenneth Taylor, a women’s high school lacrosse coach at Hershey High School from 2013 to 2018, life became anything but sweet.
Despite winning the conference and district championships in 2018, Taylor was forced out of his position by the Derry Township School Board in 2019 amid a flurry of accusations of unsavory conduct. The result was Taylor v. Derry Township School District, Civ. Action No. 1:20-CV-1363 (M.D. Pa. Jan. 7, 2022), where the coach fought back against an alleged conspiracy by the board of school directors.
The Facts
The lacrosse team achieved significant success under Taylor from 2013 to 2018, but an unnamed school board director told the athletic director that another director had heard from a player’s parent that Taylor had been “sexually inappropriate” with a female lacrosse player. Taylor countered that the director, Donna Cronin, had fabricated the story because she coveted the coaching position for herself.
The athletic director conducted an inconclusive investigation but asked Taylor to resign. Taylor denied the accusation but resigned. After the lacrosse players and their parents inundated the athletic director with statements of support for Taylor, the athletic director met with Taylor and reinstated the coach. The athletic director explained that Cronin had misled him and directed him to remove Taylor.
That is where the alleged mischief escalated. Cronin allegedly recruited Lindsay Drew, a school board director, and David Obenstine, the parent of a lacrosse player, to malign Taylor and force him to again resign. Cronin allegedly told third parties that Taylor acted inappropriately with a female player and Obenstine allegedly expressed unfounded concerns about player safety in a meeting with parents. Obenstine sent emails to the athletic director accusing the district of covering up Taylor’s inappropriate conduct.
Despite Taylor leading the team to a second consecutive conference title in 2019, the board voted not to retain him as coach by a 6-3 margin. The directors did not provide Taylor with notice of the facts underlying its accusations of emotional abuse and inappropriate conduct and it did not afford him a hearing.
In the search for a new coach, the athletic director interviewed Taylor and recommended him. The board rejected that recommendation, again by a 6-3 vote. Cronin, Drew, and Obenstine allegedly made false statements to other directors to persuade them to vote against Taylor.
Taylor filed the operative Amended Complaint against the district, Cronin, Drew, Obenstine, and four other directors who voted against rehiring him. Taylor asserted the following causes of action: violations of procedural and substantive due process, civil conspiracy, tortious interference, false light, and defamation. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
The Due Process Claims
Taylor brought claims under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, which provides a means to enforce civil rights that exist elsewhere in the law. The court dismissed the procedural due process count brought against the board directors because they were duplicative of Taylor’s claim against the district, to the extent that they were made in their official capacities. The court allowed Taylor to continue against the district since he properly alleged a deprivation of liberty when the district decided not to rehire him under circumstances creating a defamatory impression (the “stigma-plus test”).
The court denied the motion with respect to the conduct of one director, Drew, that arguably was outside of her official capacity. Drew allegedly made false statements accusing Taylor of bullying players, emotionally abusing players to the point of self-harm, engaging in inappropriate (sexual) conduct with a player, and possibly shoving another player.
As to substantive due process, Taylor alleged that he had a property interest in his continued employment under Pennsylvania law. The court granted the motion to dismiss because the board voted against retaining Taylor only after his one-year appointment expired, so he had no expectation of further employment under the law. However, since Taylor alleged in his brief that he was dismissed before his term ended, he was granted leave to amend the complaint.
The State Tort Claims
The court denied Obenstine’s motion to dismiss the interference with a prospective contract claim because “the athletic director’s recommendation the School Board rehire Taylor squarely gives rise to a reasonable probability the School Board would have hired Taylor but for the alleged smear campaign.” The court granted the motion with respect to Taylor’s claim for interference with an existing contract because he failed to allege that Obenstine’s smear campaign caused the district to terminate him, but it granted Taylor leave to amend the complaint.
On the false light claim, the court recognized that false light in Pennsylvania encompasses both untrue statements and selectively published true statements that create a false impression. This form of the invasion of privacy tort imposes liability on defendants who publish material that “is not true, is highly offensive to a reasonable person, and is publicized with knowledge or in reckless disregard of its falsity.” The court denied Obenstine’s motion because a reasonable person could find that his alleged accusations of the plaintiff’s bullying, emotional abuse of players, possibly shoving a player, and possibly engaging in sexually inappropriate conduct were offensive.
As to defamation, the issue was whether Obenstine’s statements were “merely annoying or embarrassing” and therefore not actionable. The court noted that a “statement must be capable of being proven false to give rise to a claim of defamation.” [Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1, 19-20 (1990).] The court found that statements about bullying were too commonplace to be actionable, but it let the remaining defamation claims stand.
“Abuse is a serious accusation to level at a high school coach,” the court wrote, “[that] is likely to lower the coach’s esteem in the community and can carry the connotation of criminality.”
As to the civil conspiracy count, the court noted that the plaintiff must plead: (1) facts alleging a combination of persons acting with a common purpose to do an unlawful act; (2) an overt act was done to further the common purpose; and (3) actual damages. The plaintiff must also allege an underlying tort. The court denied Obenstine’s motion because Taylor properly pleaded tortious interference, false light, and defamation, and the facts necessary to establish the three requirements.
The Public Official Immunity Defense
The court also considered Drew and Cronin’s motions to dismiss the tortious interference, false light, and defamation claims, based on Pennsylvania immunity to high school officials making defamatory statements. The issue was whether the directors made the statements while acting in their official capacity or as private individuals.
The court granted the motion with respect to all statements made during official school board meetings. But it denied the motion as to Drew and Cronin allegedly soliciting persons outside of board meetings to provide false information about Taylor.
The Takeway
- When an employer is confronted with sexual allegations concerning an employee, it should hire an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation, rather than rely on an “inconclusive” investigation by a supervisor.
- Prospective employers may publish opinions about a candidate’s credentials, but if they express unsubstantiated defamatory “facts,” they should be prepared to pay substantial legal fees, at the very least.
