by P.D. Lesko
Washtenaw County Trial Court records show that Greenhills Head of School Peter B. Fayroian, through his lawyer Andrew Bossory of Joshi Law, filed the first of two Ex Parte Motions on October 28, 2024 at 4 p.m. to ask a judge to issue …”a preliminary injunction barring Defendants from publishing any statement or article, as referenced in the October 25, 2024 email.” On October 29, 2024 at 4 p.m. Bossory filed the same Ex Parte Motion attached to a new case, “requesting the same relief,” according to the Judge’s Denial. The lawyer and his client twice petitioned a Washtenaw County Trial Court judge to stop the publication of “Greenhills Head of School Accused of Sexual Abuse.”
The newspaper was not apprised of the filing of the Ex Parte Motions and discovered the Motions had been filed through an examination of Trial Court records.
What Fayroian and Bossory were asking was for a judge to exercise what, in legal terms, is called “prior restraint.” In Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539 (1976), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled prior restraint “the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.”
Court records show that on October 30, 2024, Washtenaw County Trial Court judge Julia B. Owdziej denied both of Bossory’s Motions.
The newspaper’s article “Greenhills Head of School Accused of Sexual Abuse” was published on Oct. 28, 2024. On Oct. 25, 2024 the newspaper sent questions and a request for comment to Fayroian and the Greenhills Board members, stating that the article would be published on Monday Oct. 28. The newspaper held publication until after 9 p.m. on Monday in order to give time for the Board members and Fayroian to call or email.
On Oct. 30, 2024, the Chair of the Greenhills Board, through the school’s lawyer Christopher Trebilcock, sent an email attached to which was a PDF file of an Oct. 27, 2024 email from Neda Ryan, which Trebilcock said Ryan had sent at 7:22 p.m. on Sunday. Trebilcock wrote in his Oct. 30 email sent at 9:12 p.m., “I understand that you still maintain (and published) that no one from Greenhills contacted you or offered to speak prior to your publication of the article on Monday evening. That is knowingly and demonstrably false. Attached is the email sent to you on Sunday from Greenhills School Board Chair Neda Ryan, which was also referenced in my letter to you on Monday, prior to your publication.”
The newspaper immediately updated the article “Greenhills Parents Outraged–Employing Anyone Who Has Been Accused of Sexual Abuse is Insane” to make clear Ryan’s email had been received on Oct. 30 at 9:12 p.m. through Trebilcock. The article was also updated to reflect the fact that the Chair of the Greenhills’ Board had contacted the newspaper at 7:22 p.m. on Sunday October 27 to offer to “to correct what appears to be some fundamental and incorrect understandings of the shared parenting time dispute involving our Head of School and his ex-wife.”
In an Oct. 29, 2024 communication to Greenhills parents, the Board stated, “Although this article is new, the allegations are not and the Board has continued to closely monitor the matter since its inception. The allegations in the article are not the first of its kind that have been lodged against Peter in the midst of his divorce and child custody proceedings.” The communication also stated, “The Board immediately engaged legal counsel and offered to talk to the author about the factual inaccuracies regarding the School’s response to these allegations, as well as the inaccuracies of the legal proceedings as she described them.”
Ryan’s email sent to the newspaper by Trebilcock appears below and includes no offer to talk “about the factual inaccuracies regarding the School’s response to these allegations”:
The newspaper routinely includes comments and statements from sources that come in after a piece has been published. Fayorian’s lawyer, Bossory, in an Oct. 25th email, complained that the newspaper had not contacted him. However, the lawyer’s Oct. 25 email that threatened legal action, did not offer up any statement on behalf of his client for publication.
According to 2016 reporting published by NJ.com about a New Jersey Superior Court judge who did issue a prior restraint injunction, “Judicial orders that impose a ‘prior restraint’ on a news organization, prohibiting it from publishing articles on a specific topic, are extremely rare in the United States and have been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court several times, including in a case concerning the most closely held national secrets. In that landmark 1971 decision, New York Times Co. v. United States, the justices declined a request from President Richard Nixon’s administration to bar The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a classified study of the Vietnam War.” The New Jersey judge’s illegal order was overturned.
In Jan. 2024, the Columbia Journalism Review, in an opinion piece about judicial use of prior restraint stated, “Prior restraints have historically been rare in lower courts as well. Even judges with little First Amendment expertise know better than to cross that line. When they do, appellate courts have expedited journalists’ emergency appeals to restore order.”
The opinion piece argues that when judges ignore the Supreme Court and issue prior restraints, journalists should ignore the judges, since the lower court judges have no legal right to issue prior restraint orders.
In 2022, the Bay Area News Group in California ignored a court’s order to the press not to contact senders of publicly filed letters in support of a teacher accused of sexual abuse. The News Group’s lawyers explained at the time that the First Amendment is “particularly hostile to prior restraints that prohibit the press from reporting information disclosed in court proceedings or government records.”
The Oct. 28, 2024 reporting in “Greenhills Head of School Accused of Sexual Abuse” that Greenhills Head of School Peter B. Fayroian and his lawyer Andrew Bossory filed Ex Parte Motions asking Judge Julia B. Owdziej to quash, was based on information disclosed in court proceedings and government records.
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