An attorney for former Ooltewah High School employees claiming they were wrongly mistreated during a 2015 rape case wants to beef up their lawsuit with more evidence pointing to the man who was the Hamilton County Schools superintendent at the time.
Attorney Curtis Bowe did not expand Thursday on what he plans to add about Rick Smith, the former superintendent and one of many public officials named in his clients’ June lawsuit.
But Bowe must make the changes before early January as attorneys move toward an Oct. 30, 2018, trial date that U.S. District Magistrate Judge Christopher Steger set Thursday.
“That needs to be a very tight timeline,” said W. Carl Spining, an attorney representing Smith and the school district. “We need to know what the facts are so we can defend, and I think we need to know them very, very soon.”
Bowe filed the 33-page civil lawsuit in Chattanooga’s U.S. District Court on behalf of former Ooltewah High School Principal Jim Jarvis, former athletic director Allard “Jesse” Nayadley and former head basketball coach Andre “Tank” Montgomery, as well as all of their spouses. Bowe said school, county and state officials violated the men’s rights by “illegally disseminating false facts” and stripping them of the “opportunity to defend their employment against the untrue and malicious allegations” after the December 2015 trip to Gatlinburg, Tenn., during which a freshman student was raped with a pool cue.