Tom Kovach [rhymes with "watch"] had been a Sign Language interpreter for two years in February of 2007, when the student tried to slap Kovach in the face while they were in the library of Whites Creek High School. Instinctively, Kovach then grabbed the student’s wrist to stop the assault in mid-motion. At that point, the student’s fingers were only two inches from Kovach’s left eye. The student attempted to incite 15 other students to pile on. But then, Kovach — a former Air Force law-enforcement supervisor, and former leader of a counter-terrorist team — restrained the student and took him to the school office. On the way down the hall, the student attempted to punch Kovach in the face. Once inside the office, the student picked up an umbrella from a countertop, and tried repeatedly to stab Kovach in the face with the metal end.

Then, the school district fired Kovach.

Then, after Kovach went to a local TV-news station and reported his side of the story, claiming that his treatment had been patently unfair, Kovach was arrested and charged with assaulting the student. The criminal charge came two months after the incident, but only four days after the TV-news story aired. Kovach acted as his own attorney, and the charge was later retired. But, the case dragged on — "conveniently", according to the recently-filed lawsuit — until after the statutory limitations precluded Kovach from filing an assault charge against the student. Kovach alleges in his civil lawsuit that the Metro Nashville Police Department, a co-defendant, wrongfully arrested him, and wrongfully refused to arrest the student. During the pre-trial hearings on the criminal charge, the student admitted to his actions, but no charge was ever filed against him. (The student also admitted in court that Kovach never struck him, but only grabbed him in two restraining moves.) While the case was in progress, the student was sent to a Job Corps camp for an unrelated incident. The criminal charge against Kovach was dropped before the case went to trial.

Tom Kovach (rhymes with “watch”) represents himself in court

The civil lawsuit, filed Monday in US District Court in Nashville (Case Number 3:09-cv-00886, Chief Judge Campbell), claims that the school district, the police department, the school principal, and one teacher — whom Kovach claims wrote a false statement during the investigation — acted to cause actual damage to Kovach’s reputation in the community, plus physical and mental stress and anguish. (Kovach is a disabled veteran, who was severely injured in a high-speed parachute malfunction while in the Air Force.) In addition to relief for those actual damages, Kovach is also seeking punitive relief — which, under Federal law, can be ten times the amount of the actual damages — for the violations of his civil rights with regard to due process and wrongful arrest.

If the plaintiff’s name looks familiar, it is likely because of news coverage of another well-known case in which Kovach acted as his own attorney. In late 2007, Kovach filed a lawsuit to block TN Gov. Phil Bredesen from starting construction on a $19-million underground party hall at the Governor’s Mansion. The project was nicknamed Bredesen’s Bunker — which even became the subject of a spoof song. Kovach is also a political activist, is the Tennessee state chairman of America’s Independent Party (the third-largest political party in the United States), and, in 2006, had challenged Jim Cooper for the 5th Congressional District seat here. Several weeks before the lawsuit was filed, the TN Democratic Party had issued an official press release that called Kovach a "child abuser", citing the school incident as justification. (They issued that release after Kovach organized a protest against one of Cooper’s recent speeches.) The party later retracted that release after Kovach sent an e-mail with the facts of the incident and a threat to sue the Democratic Party. “That was the last straw,” Kovach said. "It’s time to go to court, set the record straight, and make the real malefactors pay for what they did."

While working at the high school, Kovach was the union steward for the non-teacher employees. The lawsuit claims that the cafeteria workers were becoming afraid to come to work, because of the "wilding" activities of many unruly students. The lawsuit also claims that the school principal used the student’s assault as an excuse to get rid of Kovach, who had threatened to file a union action against the school on behalf of the cafeteria workers. Jamie Jenkins, the man that fired Kovach, is no longer the principal of Whites Creek High School.

After being fired from the school, Kovach started a not-for-profit group called Change Our Schools. He received e-mails from all over Tennessee, and from several other states, describing similar incidents of "student-upon-staff violence". A common thread of the stories was that school districts would tell staff members to not defend themselves physically if attacked, because the families of students might file lawsuits. Kovach says, "Instead, the school districts need to start fearing lawsuits from their staff members."

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