A former Ross School student and his father have filed a $10 million lawsuit in Suffolk Supreme Court alleging that the student was bullied, threatened, and verbally abused by Ross School faculty during and after an overseas field trip in 2020.
The student, Hayden Soloviev, and his father, Stefan Soloviev, have hired the law firm Becker and Poliakoff L.L.C., which has four East Coast offices, to pursue compensatory and punitive damages.
Hayden Soloviev left the Ross School after his junior year to study at East Hampton High School. In the suit, he and his father claim he suffered "severe damages including but not limited to physical, mental, and emotional distress" during a school trip last year to multiple South American countries. The Solovievs say the faculty chaperones were negligent in their duties by giving their under-age students alcohol, telling them to keep it a secret, and bullying, threatening, and verbally abusing Hayden.
He says he complained to Ross officials upon his return to school, but alleges the administration never advised him or his parents of the outcome of its investigation "and refused to respond to any of their inquiries."
One of the faculty members, the Solovievs say in the suit, had a history of bullying students prior to the field trip. According to a statement from their law firm, they are claiming "negligence in hiring, breach of the Ross School's enrollment contract and the policies in the Ross School's handbook, unjust enrichment, [and] breach of several duties including trust and duty to warn."
The accused faculty member, Christopher Maddalone, is alleged to have "forcibly obtained" Hayden Soloviev's user name and password for an Instagram account that he was using to post commentary and daily photos of the overseas trip. "Defendant Maddalone physically took control of the Instagram account . . . by threatening Hayden with retaliation" in the form of a failing grade, the suit says, if Hayden did not hand over his social media information. The suit also claims that another faculty member, Daniel Donovan, "did not do anything to stop Maddalone's conduct and participated in Maddalone's conduct."
The suit details Hayden's early return to East Hampton, at which point there were Covid-19 restrictions and remote learning programs in place, and says he was placed in a class with one other student who had also allegedly been bullied by Mr. Maddalone.
"The Ross School's systemic failures have caused Hayden to now approach his life in a very different manner than before. This action is meant to redress those failures," the suit states.
Two other faculty members, Peter Roberts and Sinead Quinlan, and Bill O'Hearn, head of the Ross School, are also named as defendants in the Solovievs' suit. In a statement to the press, Mr. O'Hearn said the school is "aware of the claims."
The school "is extraordinarily proud of its proven record of excellence and care of its students' academic development and personal well-being," Mr. O'Hearn said. "While the school takes seriously any assertion of misconduct -- whether it is by students, teachers, or administrators -- we are confident that the Solovievs' claims of damages are . . . without merit."
Mr. O'Hearn said Hayden was not "forced to unenroll" from the Ross School.
"We understand that Hayden intends to begin college in the fall, and we wish him every continued success," he added.
According to the suit, Hayden attended Ross for the sixth and seventh grades and the ninth through 11th grades. His father, Stefan Soloviev, is a well-known farm owner who founded Crossroads Agriculture in 1999. The Suffolk Times reported in December 2019 that he owns several large parcels on the North Fork and another 150,000 acres of farmland in the Midwest, and that he bought the former Davis Peach Farm in Wading River in 2016. It is now called Hayden's Orchard.