Defamation pre action issue

[islandgirl]

I am confused about why you wanted a judicial review? There is a clear process for complaints of this nature in school policy. I also have no idea why you would target a teacher and not the organisation in relation to accusations made. If you get any further this person will have the full legal weight of their union behind them (I speak as someone with teaching qualifications). I think the best thing would be to go and speak to a qualified solicitor about the actions you propose to take and heed their advice. I hope you get the resolution you wish.

[Minidog]

The teacher made the allegations to the police personally, it was not yhe school was an entity, I checked with the police. This was done in response to me complainingcabout her. I can't really take action on that (absolute privilage) but can on what she said to the school on the same which is lies only said after I complained about her behaviour. She also removed my child from the school at a time before the exclusion was due to begin when I was at the school to speak to senior staff about the exclusion, which this teacher blocked. Her behaviour at that time was also very unprofessional.

I followed the proper process also but that process, with Xmas, has a longer period than the judicial review time limits. I sought judicial review as the head failed to follow any of the dfe guidance on Exclusions, the process was not followed at all giving me the grounds. I also only issued the letter before proceedings and made it clear to the school that the process would be followed but that its time limits were longer than the judicial review limits and that I would wait until the last minute of those limits to make the actual court application. I also requested they speed up their process so that could be complete prior to that.

On top of this my child was excluded for legally defending herself, the other much larger male child had attacked her 5 times without her defending herself, the school took no action each time those were reported, only taking action when my child defended herself.

The head called me the after receiving the info she eventually over turned the exclusion on. She had no intention of over turning anything based on that info. Yet she did just because of my letter before claim. As a teacher you may not understand why I would submit for judicial review but it worked.

In terms of the union, I'm not bothered about fighting a union. The only thing that bothers in me that respect is that she would not need to pay for her own legal help. Without this teacher acting how she did I would have been able to rectify the exclusion without my child missing any school and I would not have had threatening phone calls from the police.

I do understand that many can consider my actions extreme but I have considerable experience with complaints against many public bodies. This was a close ranks and protect situation by the school. In my experience you are simply better off utilising court processes if you can. Those tactics don't work so well then. I have no doubt without my letter before claim this would not have been over turned.

I very much appreciate your advice though. Whilst I came here for legal advice the advice of a teacher / governer is very useful to me. I think the school have the same view as you, why would you Take this course of action?

[R0b]

In terms of her personal address. Would the fact that I asked her directly to provide this and she refused not count as me taking reasonable steps? I had not considered a tracing agency, I can not locate her on social media.

That may be ok for the letter before action but once you get to the stage of issuing legal proceedings, there are very specific rules in place for the steps of serving the claim form (CPR 16). There are tiered steps if X or Y happens and you have to read the rules carefully - there has been plenty of case law around serving the claim form and getting it wrong and your suggestion that if she refuses to provide details is unlikely to cut the mustard.

If you can't find her address and you think you have her current place of residence then you need to be 100% certain, otherwise the safest and best method would be to ask the court by making an application. If you ask the court to make that decision, you know that she cannot argue that service was invalid if she chose to ignore it and it may be that the court decides the best method is to serve the claim to her work address since that is where she works and is most likely going to have the best chance of receiving it.

I don't have anything to add really, I think we have all pointed out some of the potential hurdles you need to get over including the 'serious harm' element for defamation, meaning that you have to show the defamatory comments weren't just defamatory, but were significant enough to cause serious harm. Anything less even if the comments were defamatory, will be thrown out by the court. So long as you are comfortable and you are going in eyes wide open, the risk is on you to decide if it is worth it.

I wish you luck.