Litigation Support

Starting Slander Trial Today

By Blake Boyd

In July of 2004 I was approached by an acquaintance that happened to be an assistant DA that had a big trial coming up. Since I would be working for the Government there wasn’t much available in the form of payment, but it offered me my first criminal trial experience.

Today I start working on a slander lawsuit against the child abuser and her parents. Should be pretty interesting, the parents have admitted in deposition that they “only told family members” that the parents of the baby were the ones that abused him, not their daughter. Others witness’, which are not family members are saying the same. And this is going on years later, even after the child abuser has been convicted and her appeals have run dry.

My question is: How much in damages can you really get a jury to award for someone essentially “talking s@#$”?

Now this is a small town, population 9,500. The mother of the abused baby works in the elementary school. I can see some pretty damaging consequences in employment or future employment by someone going around essentially saying “She almost beat her own child to death”.

Like I always say… You never know what a jury will do.

My View:

Sitting through the criminal trial I was appalled at the actions of the babysitter. Even then they were insinuating that it had to have been the parents who beat the child.

The parents dropped the child off with the babysitter at 6am. At 1:30pm she called 911 saying the baby wasn’t breathing. During those 7.5 hours the baby slept, was cranky and ate.. all while having a broken (twisted style break) femur, brain bleeding, blinded in left eye, and multiple bruises? Come on..

She was found guilty and given the maximum sentence. If my daughter had done this I would not go around trying to blame others. I would realize there were two people in the house; one being the baby and the other being my daughter. I would accept that my daughter lost her cool and committed a horrendous crime. And I would shut up.

We’ll see how it goes. In any way you look at it, it’s sad. This child will never have the life he could have had.

Full post as published by The Trial Technologist's View on October 06, 2008 (boomark / email).