Labor / Employment

Fresh Off Of Having Charges Dropped Against His Client For Infamous Central Park 911 Call, Amy Cooper's Attorney Now Threatens 'Legal Consequences' Against Those Who 'Rushed To the Wrong Conclusion’

This is why we can't have nice things.

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Image via YouTube/ Christian Cooper

Oh joy, Amy Cooper isn’t going to jail. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office — yes, the same DA who has a reputation for selective law enforcement (hint: poor people of color don’t fare so well) — dropped the charges against Cooper. Cooper vaulted to infamy last spring when a video of her threatening to call the cops on a Central Park bird watcher, Christian Cooper — no relation — went viral. Vance announced in October that charges were being filed against Amy Cooper for filing a false police report, though Christian Cooper said at the time he wouldn’t cooperate with the prosecution, saying the public humiliation and losing her job as part of the hubbub was punishment enough.

Now Christian Cooper’s had his way and Amy Cooper is in the clear.

According to reports, Amy Cooper completed a therapeutic educational program — a whopping whole five sessions of them, which included a racial bias component. Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said Cooper’s therapist described it as a “moving experience” and said Cooper “learned a lot” from it. And so, the charges were dropped. As unfair as this might strike some, it might not get a mention at Above the Law, seeing as we’re focused on the machinations of the legal industry, not just a single criminal case. But then her lawyer started running his mouth.

As reported by Law & Crime, Amy Cooper’s attorney Robert Barnes made this statement:

“After a thorough and honest inquiry, the New York District Attorney’s office concluded the appropriate outcome of this matter was complete dismissal of all charges. We thank them for their integrity, and agree with the outcome,” Barnes said in a statement to Law&Crime. “Many others rushed to the wrong conclusion based on inadequate investigation, and for some, there may be legal consequences coming.”

I guess taking a W gracefully wasn’t one of those things Amy Cooper learned in her restorative justice class.

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Deep sigh. Of course this sort of puffery is exactly Barnes’s go-to move. Back in May, he threatened Amy Cooper’s now former employer with legal action:

“Sixty seconds of panic in a park in response to a stranger saying he is about to do something to a woman alone in the park that ‘you won’t like’ cost a lady her job, her public reputation, and her livelihood, even after she apologized for her reaction. Her employer promised to conduct a fair investigation, then publicly rushed to join the reputational lynch mob of their own employee,” Barnes told Law&Crime in May. “Amy Cooper enjoys potential legal claims against her employer for defamation because they gave the world the impression they conducted an impartial investigation that led them to conclude her motivations were malevolent racism within the employment setting when they conducted no such investigation and no such information would support such a conclusion.”

No, you haven’t forgotten the basics of defamation law. As Christy Hull Eikhoff, a partner at Alston & Bird and a defamation expert, said, calling Cooper or her actions racist would likely fall under the “subjective opinion” exception. And employment law expert Tom Spiggle explained that employment law is also unlikely to help Amy Cooper’s cause, since “Private employers have pretty broad latitude to terminate you for out-of-work conduct — it’s usually perfectly legal.”

We’ll have to wait and see if this bluster turns into an actual lawsuit. But if Amy Cooper wasn’t a fan of the last media frenzy she was at the center of, well, litigation seems like a poor choice to return to a non-infamous life.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

 

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