Former Midlands school board member allowed to sue colleagues for conspiracy
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Judge allows Ken Loveless to expand lawsuit to include four additional defendants.
- Lawsuit alleges coordinated defamation effort involving ethics accusations and leaks.
- Defense argues free speech protections and statute of limitations should apply.
A former Midlands school board member can add his former school board colleagues to an existing lawsuit against a current school board member, a judge has ruled.
Ken Loveless, a former member of the Lexington-Richland 5 school board, can expand his defamation lawsuit against current board member Kevin Scully to include former board members Beth Hutchison and Ed White, former school board attorney Michael Montgomery, and White’s wife Bea White. Loveless accuses all of the defendants of being part of an illegal conspiracy against him.
The decision by Judge Charles McCutchen now allows Loveless’ lawsuit to move forward against all the defendants.
Loveless had previously filed a federal lawsuit against Hutchison, Montgomery, White and former school board member Michael Cates. That suit alleged his former school board colleagues conspired to defame him and violate his free speech rights by accusing him of unethical conduct in his relations with the firm building a new elementary school.
What’s in the current lawsuit?
Loveless’ amended lawsuit alleges coordination with Scully in those efforts. It accuses Scully of taking a photo of Loveless and three other board members sitting in a Waffle House in 2021. The photo caused controversy because South Carolina’s open meetings laws prohibit a majority of a public body from meeting outside of a publicly announced meeting. The photo was later shared online by Hutchison, the lawsuit alleges.
Loveless said at the time that he and his colleagues did nothing wrong, and says in the lawsuit he used the opportunity to share photos of his then-recently born grandson.
Loveless also accuses Scully of working with Hutchison and White to distribute a press release about the ethics accusations against Loveless back in 2020, and of using his government email address as an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to craft the press release and forward it to media outlets.
At a May 19 hearing on the amended lawsuit, Loveless attorney Desa Ballard told the court she discovered evidence of the conspiracy when she began going through discovery materials gathered from Scully. She claims they discovered the new defendants “recruited Mr. Scully to be a member of an existing conspiracy.”
Lawsuit expands
Defense attorney Gene Matthews argued that a suit that alleges actions dating back to 2020 has passed the time limit for Loveless to bring action, even if he initially took the case to federal court. He also criticized Loveless’ basis for the claims against his clients.
“They’ve confused elections and public politics with conspiracy and others exercising their First Amendment rights,” he said.
Ballard argued the conspiracy continued to defame Loveless after he left the school board at the end of 2022. The statue of limitations should not apply because “the conspiracy continues to this day,” she said, adding that the former school board members “acted outside the scope of the school board when they took actions as individuals,” and that Montgomery likewise acted “outside the scope and role of an attorney.”
At one point, Ballard said that because of the defendants’ actions, the public’s opinion of Loveless would be framed as “that sleazeball I read about in The State newspaper,” Ballard said.
“So they achieved what they wanted,” she said. “They set out on a crusade to destroy my client’s reputation, and they’ve done an excellent job.”
Judge McCutchen found that Loveless had met the standard for adding additional defendants to his suit, and noted the defendants had already responded to similar allegations in Loveless’ federal lawsuit. He said questions around the statue of limitations and Montgomery’s attorney-client relations with the board could be addressed as the lawsuit progresses.
Loveless was ultimately charged with violating the state’s Ethics Act over allegations initially raised by Hutchison and White during their time on the school board of an inappropriate relationship with a construction firm hired by Lexington-Richland 5. He was fined more than $6,000 by the S.C. Ethics Commission. Loveless appealed that decision, but the Ethics Commission upheld its decision in March.
The federal conspiracy lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Mary Geiger Lewis last year. In her ruling, Lewis said Loveless couldn’t point to any actual harm the defendants had caused him, and that his defeat in his 2022 bid for re-election was not reviewable by a court. Loveless then moved to have Hutchison, Montgomery and White — but not Cates — added to his pre-existing lawsuit against Scully.
Loveless originally filed suit against Scully in 2022, accusing him of libeling the school board member in comments on Facebook, including calling Loveless “Crooked Ken” and “a loser.” The lawsuit has continued to wind its way through the courts even after Loveless lost his bid for re-election that year and Scully was elected to a separate seat on the board.
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