AEA Dismisses Meritless Lawsuit

Akron Education Association (AEA) and its president, Pat Shipe, dismissed their meritless lawsuit today against the Akron Board of Education, Akron Education Association v. Akron Board of Education, CV-2024-01-0328, just hours before AEA's president, Pat Shipe, was scheduled for a deposition under oath to explain the factual basis for the alleged claims.

The lawsuit wrongfully alleged that all seven of the individual Board members "intentionally" and "fraudulently" deleted 40 seconds from a live-streamed video of the Board meeting held on January 8, 2024, even though none of the Board members are personally involved in the live-steaming process or have access to the archived video after it has been uploaded to YouTube. Yet, without any factual or legal basis, AEA and Shipe filed a public lawsuit against all seven of the Board members that wrongfully attacked their reputations and caused the school district to needlessly incur the time and expense of defending AEA's meritless claims.

After the lawsuit was filed, the Akron Board of Education promptly filed a Motion to Dismiss; and the Court scheduled a Hearing on the Motion for September 11. Shipe was scheduled for a deposition on September 3 at 1 p.m.; but, in order to avoid the deposition and the hearing, AEA and Shipe filed a Notice of Dismissal on the morning of September 3. The dismissal only confirms that AEA and Shipe lacked any factual or legal basis for the lawsuit and wrongfully caused the unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer dollars in defense of their meritless case. 

"AEA and Shipe took the depositions of nine school district employees and did not discover any evidence of wrongdoing by any of the individual Board members." reported the Board's attorney, Stephen Funk. "This lawsuit needlessly caused the school district to incur the time and expense of defending the meritless allegations," stated Board President Diana Autry and "did not advance the interests of the school district community at all."