Lawyers for Ashley Payne and Barrow County Schools succeeded in reaching an agreement last Thursday regarding a dispute over information demanded by the school district. As a result of the agreement, a hearing which had been scheduled for Friday, April 30 was canceled.
Superior Court judge David Motes ordered the hearing early last month after the school district filed a motion requesting that Payne be compelled to “respond sufficiently” to the district’s interrogatories and request for production of documents.
Payne’s attorney Richard Storrs objected to several of the questions saying the information requested was irrelevant and had “no bearing on whether Ms. Payne’s resignation was a voluntary and informed decision.”
According to Storrs, he and Payne considered many of the questions to be an invasion of privacy.
“Our objections were so pervasive that we provided very little information,” Storrs admitted.
After discussing the matter, Storrs and Payne decided to provide some of the information requested by Barrow County Schools.
“We still objected to a lot of things,” Storrs said citing privacy concerns. However, the attorney for the school district agreed that enough information had been provided to satisfy the intent of the discovery.
The school district had requested additional information regarding Payne’s answers to several questions including one which asked if she had ever had a Facebook account or profile. Payne was instructed to provide detailed information about the account including privacy settings, the date any privacy settings were changed, the name, address and telephone number of every person designated as a Facebook friend and the name address and telephone number of any individual who had access to the Facebook profile.
Storrs said Payne was unable to provide the addresses and telephone numbers of all her Facebook friends, but did provide a list of her friends as of the date an anonymous email was sent to then Barrow County School superintendent Ron Saunders regarding her online activity. The “questionable” activity included posting vacation photos on Facebook which showed Payne holding a glass of what was presumed to be an alcoholic beverage and a reference to a game known as “Bitch Bingo.”
“We continued to object to identifying all the people she had played that game with,” Storrs said. “We just didn’t think it was appropriate. She doesn’t want to get anybody into trouble.”
Storrs said Payne also provided the school district with copies of all the photos she posted on Facebook, but could not provide details regarding privacy settings and other similar questions.
“They seemed to be fairly satisfied with that,” Storrs said.
Payne was also asked to provide information regarding any MySpace, Twitter or any other social networking accounts, questions which Storrs also said were irrelevant.
“They were fishing, but what was interesting is that she had a MySpace account where she had five friends,” Storrs said. “She had never really used it, but we provided a screen shot of that.”
Storrs said the request regarding the Twitter account was also easily fulfilled.
“She opened this account and made one Tweet,” Storrs explained. “It was a completely meaningless little Tweet. [The school district] was just fishing for information.”
Storrs said he believes attorneys for the school district are attempting to uncover any “skeletons in her closet” which might explain why Payne would have willingly resigned.
Payne was reportedly “ushered” into a meeting with Apalachee High School principal David McGee on August 27, 2009 regarding the anonymous email complaint and her online activity. Allegedly, McGee informed Payne that her online conduct was unacceptable and that if she did not resign, she would be suspended.
Payne resigned from the school system immediately, but subsequently claimed she was not informed of her right to a hearing. Payne said she also was not told that a suspension could only be for a period of ten days. As a result, Payne said her resignation was wrongfully coerced by McGee.
Storrs said the school district is hoping to find something that Payne feared would be uncovered if a deeper investigation was made into her online activity. Storrs said there is nothing in his client’s past that would have prompted her resignation.
“There’s no other lurking skeleton,” Storrs said. “It’s not like that at all.”
Storrs expressed relief that the discovery issue was settled outside the court and said he looks forward to airing the merits of the case.
Storrs expects the case to go before the court in early August.
Mr McGee was wrong in the way he handled this and so is the BOE for letting the matter get to a law suit! Shame on you!
Now, of all times, our tax dollars are being spent on this kind of non-sense!