A Scottsdale couple, Amanda and Daniel Wray, have filed a response in a lawsuit filed by the father of Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board member Jann-Michael Greeburg. The couple filed the Special Motion to Dismiss the Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation (“anti-SLAPP”) in Maricopa County Superior Court, alleging that the lawsuit filed by Mark Greenberg was made in an effort to silence them.
“The Greenburg sued to stop Amanda Wray from speaking out. It’s more of the same from him and the left: compiling creepy dossiers on parents and now filing bogus suits to stop them from standing up for their kids,” the Wray’s attorney, Jack Wilenchik, told the Arizona Daily Independent.
Wilenchik requested the “Court find that this lawsuit was brought to deter or prevent Defendants from exercising their constitutional rights and is thereby brought for an improper purpose, including to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation, and impose additional sanctions as permitted by A.R.S. § 12-752(B).”
Strategic lawsuits against public participation (also known as SLAPP suits or intimidation lawsuits) are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.
At issue is the compilation of a dossier that focused on some parents, their children, a popular radio show host, and concerned residents by Jann-Michael and his father, Mark. The collected material included photos and some personal finance documents of their subjects.
Parents had reported feeling threatened by both father and son long before anyone was aware of the dossier’s existence. The dossier was made public by Wray who had taken a copy of it from Greenburg’s private Google drive, which he inadvertently gave her access to.
The elder Greenburg sued the Wrays for making the dossier public.
Critics say that while Greenburgs seem to have compiled the material on parents in an effort to embarrass them, it was Greenburgs who should have been mortified and embarrassed by the contents.
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The younger Greenburg, who still lives in his parents’ home, has denied involvement in the dossier creation. However, some of the video files appear to have been created by the father in the presence of his son. Despite this, the son has denied any involvement in the spying effort.
According to AZFree News, “there are two instances in the past where his shared computer activity became evident. In an August school board meeting, Jann-Michael admitted that his brother, also named Mark, was the one who set up his Microsoft Word account. He didn’t explain further why his brother’s profile and name continued to be on his computer.”
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