That Lawsuit Again: Ronald S. Federici vs. A Crowd of Critics

Some readers may remember a lawsuit for defamation filed against me and a number of other people, part of which I attempted to describe at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2010/12/federici-v-mercer-story-behind-lawsuit.html. I have to acknowledge now that my guess about Ronald Federici’s complaint about me was quite incorrect. I assumed he was going to complain about my comments on his involvement in the Salvetti case, in which adoptive parents went to prison for withholding food from their son and keeping him locked in a room for months. When I appeared in Fairfax County, VA, Small Claims Court to answer his original suit, that was what I thought the issue was, and I never found out otherwise because the judge rather quickly found for me.

However, when, after several other legal moves, Federici brought suit again against me and others, I discovered that my comments about the Salvetti case were not even a point of concern--- and I presume that this was because the factual parts of my remarks were drawn from documents of the North Carolina Court of Appeals. (I would not have made the statements I did without that kind of evidence to back me up.) Instead, Federici had a number of complaints about things that had been said about him on the Internet, and as it happened not one of them had been said by me.

Now that sufficient time has passed from the dismissal of Federici’s suit in Virgina Eastern District Court (incidentally, the same court that dismissed a defamation suit against Paul Offit about a year ago), all the relevant documents are now posted at http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/federici-v-pignotti-et-al. You can see in “Federici’s complaint” his attorney’s description of what was said about him, and you can look at the many copies of Internet material to see what actually was said. As I mentioned, there was nothing about the Salvetti case; presumably, it would have been too hard to argue that my remarks were inaccurate. By the way, if you look at the “update” on this case, please note that the recent granting of Federici’s motion was in response to his attorney’s request for a formal statement that the suit against the “John Does” was dismissed, as well as the suit against the named defendants. For anyone interested in this situation, a look at the Memorandum requesting that dismissal will be rewarding, as it reveals the attorney’s reasons for wanting to stop representing Federici.

The Dismissal Hearing Transcript posted at citmedialaw has some points that I found of particular interest. Federici’s lawyer made the following statement: “… they have even called and made complaints that Dr. Federici assisted in the--- in the killing of a child. And they have actually not only put this online, they have actually reached out to the Virginia Board [of Psychology] to actually make the same false complaints.”

I have several comments about this statement. The first is that nowhere in material quoted in the Complaint is any such claim made, by any of the defendants. One thing that is actually said is that some of the methods advocated by Federici are potentially dangerous and have been associated with deaths in a considerable number of well-documented cases. A second point made in that material is that Federici’s methods resemble those of a group of so-called Attachment Therapists some of whose members have been involved in child deaths.

No one among the defendants in this case has accused Federici of killing a child directly or of in any way assisting in such a killing. If any of us thought there was evidence of such a thing, we would not bother to tell his professional licensing board, but would go as quickly as possible to bring our evidence to the police. My own complaints to Federici’s licensing board, which I made some years ago, have to do with inaccurate representation of his professional credentials, which, interestingly, I see repeated by his attorney in the Dismissal Hearing Transcript.

The statement made by the attorney at the dismissal hearing seems to be based on faulty logic. If someone says I’m a clumsy parallel parker, is that the same as saying I’ve damaged other people’s cars and had my insurance rates put up? No, of course not, and to say that someone’s methods are dangerous is not the same as saying that he has directly or indirectly caused a death. Naturally I’m very pleased that the suit was dismissed, but there’s something in me that would have liked to see how an opposing attorney would have handled the claim that anyone had accused Federici of killing.

One question people have asked is who the John Does were. Of the ones I know anything about, most are people who commented online and used pseudonyms. Strangely, though, two were Mr. and Mrs. Salvetti, Federici’s clients who went to prison after their adopted son was found to have been denied a normal diet. Did someone think these people had commented on Federici’s methods? As far as I know, they have been completely silent about the advice they received from him. And, again as far as I know, they were not served with this complaint, any more than the Internet commentators were.

The fact is that this lawsuit was what is called a SLAPP suit: a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Its intention was to have a chilling effect on public discussion of the methods Federici advocates. Federici was asking for compensation of $300,000, plus treble damages under a Virginia law, plus various other odds and ends. I am sure that these amounts were not expected to materialize; the goal was, instead, to encourage mediation, and to demand, in exchange for dropping the suit, a promise not to mention Federici again. Some states have legislation that allows defendants to fight these SLAPP suits, but Virginia is unfortunately not among them.

I mentioned above that the documents are posted on http://www.citmedialaw.org/. Let me take a moment here to praise the Citizen Media Law Project. I’d put their badge up here if I could figure out how to do it! This group, which is hosted by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, provides services to people who run into difficulties when posting legitimate material on the Internet. I e-mailed them on a Sunday and first thing Monday morning had an answer. Within a day, I participated in a conference call with the group and told them what I most wanted, which was a contact with a Virginia lawyer knowledgeable about defamation and Internet issues. They quickly provided me with the name of Josh Heslinga of Richmond, with whom I arranged for an hour’s consultation at his regular fee-- and the work he actually did must have taken about 5 hours and was enormously helpful. Because Josh was at some distance from the court in question, he suggested several other attorneys, and I found excellent representation at Cochran & Owen of Vienna, VA. All of this went smoothly because of the input of the Citizen Media Law Project-- without them, I have no idea how I would have found an attorney I trusted in a state at some distance from my home.