I am a young male teacher at a high school. Recently, and much to my surprise, I learned that I had been tutoring a young lady and had even had her over for dinner. Thankfully, the situation was dealt with swiftly through an administrative investigation and they found the girl to be lying (as it was pretty obvious). That all occurred last week. However, this week, many students have come to me asking if I am "dating a student" or if I "had an affair with a student." I am generally an easy-going guy and pride myself on not getting worked up about things, but this has absolutely torn me up. It has rendered me to be untrusting in the workplace and has jaded my job performance. Not to mention, I have lost much sleep. At first, in my state of shock, I felt a little sorry for the girl (thinking that she just needed counseling, or some school disciplinary action), but as I watched her pick lint off of her jacket when the principal was informing her just how serious what she said is.. I'm pretty sure I want to get legal with this.
Any suggestions?
Think this out. I'm going to give you a practical and not a legal answer here. The more a story is repeated, the more likely it is to be remembered and believed, so if you really want to trash and ruin your reputation, go for a legal remedy. Realisticly, if nothing happened to your job, you arguably have no damages, so you could win a nominal judgment, like a dollar, instead of a large one (we don't have enough facts here to really address this aspect). If you don't really care about your reputation and want this matter talked about for years, talk to a lawyer that specializes in such civil matters, but do realize that beating a horse to death keeps that horse in the public eye.
