JACKSON, Miss. - You can't file a lawsuit because your son didn't make the baseball team, a Mississippi court has told a father who felt a social-media beef with a coach was hurting his kid.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals this month ruled for Presbyterian Christian School in its legal battle with Marshall Green, who is arguing his son is being punished for Marshall's social media posts about PCS's baseball coach.
"This is simply a case of parental disagreement with a coaching decision," Judge Latrice Westbrooks wrote.
Green's son tried out for the 7th-8th grade team in 2019 but wasn't selected. Green had criticized the tryouts on social media and felt the coach not selecting his son was payback.
The student transferred elsewhere to play baseball but came back to PCS as an eighth-grader, making the team in spring 2022. But Green felt he received unfair treatment and did not get enough playing time, leading him to sue in March 2023.
He asserted claims for negligent hiring, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy, but the trial judge dismissed them all and never decided a request to transfer the case to another county.
Forrest County judge Prentiss Greene Harrell told the parties in 2023 he was "not going to allow a floodgate to allow every parent to file a lawsuit against a junior high and high school and its coaches who believe their child did not get... selected or was cut because for whatever reasons."
No actionable legal claims were in Green's complaint, the decisions say. Green attempted to introduce additional evidence in a motion to amend the judgment, claiming a recording of a meeting and emails would help their case.
"The Court understands the emotional component to sports at every level - both as a competitor and a spectator," Harrell wrote in 2023.
"However, the Court does not believe Mississippi law permits judges or juries to conduct judicial review of coaching decisions - especially routine decisions such as the specific players who make up any given team."
