Middle Schooler’s Book Inspires Lawsuit
Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer has broken a story about Highland Park Middle School. In a nutshell: One HPMS student wrote a novel that features characters named after his peers; one of those peers’ mothers has filed a lawsuit agains the novelist’s parents.
It’s absolutely obvious who the mom is. “MP” ring a bell? I’m sorry she has to go through this. Awful!
OMG.
Wow. I don’t usually believe in these types of lawsuits, and not sure I do here either, but if I was that girls parents, I’d certainly do something. Crazy.
I don’t think the mother had much choice but to file this lawsuit. With the right to free speech comes responsibility.
Very unfortunately, now more people will read the book.
Isn’t slander and defamation saying something is true that is not true? If the child said the book is fiction, how can that be defamation? Or, let’s say it is about wrongfully appropriating a person’s name and likeness without that person’s permission. Didn’t the papers say he asked if he could use her name, and didn’t they say he told her the character with her name would be a victim of date rape? Wasn’t that consent to use her name and likeness? Where is the damage? This seems like a stretch to me.
It says in the filing that the girl consented but couldn not have understood what all the bad things that happened in the book actually meant. I’m not sure about that…i mean, the boy who wrote the book is the same age as the girl…he knows what date rape and drugs are, but she doesn’t?
@Interested. “For fiction, the question is whether readers can identify a real person from your description.” Or so says Flatiron writers Blog. I’m sure consent will be a factual issue to be determined at trial.
13 year old children say “Oh, ok,” to just about anything.
Not an attorney but I doubt minors can ‘consent’ to anything. I must sign for my son’s photos to be used, etc.
If the teacher agreed for his/her name to be used in the book, it’s highly unlikely that he/she agreed for this namesake character to be portrayed as a pedophile.
Actually it was a boy. I’m not going to mention his name. I don’t know why he would do this, and whatever the reason was, he still shouldn’t have done it. I think his parents got rid of his Facebook and punished him with other things.
Updates?
Wow.
No updates? How is the lawsuit progressing? Have their been any further school comments?
This boy needs to be kicked right out of the neighborhood and his parents must accompany him to some trashy little town to live out the rest of his days in isolation. The parents are repulsive to have let their 14 yo boy do something so hurtful to his classmates. He ruined his life or did his parents? Nasty.