When State Supreme Court Justice William J. Condon ruled on Dec. 7 in favor of the Ross School in a lawsuit claiming that Hayden Soloviev was a victim of bullying and that his teachers were negligent as chaperones during an overseas field trip, the former Ross student said he was shocked. The Soloviev family has filed a notice of intent to appeal, The Star confirmed this week.
“When I read the report from the judge, I was disappointed to see he took the defendant’s version of the events,” Mr. Soloviev, who graduated from East Hampton High School in 2021, said by phone on Monday. “The judge said I had to have gone through some sort of physical abuse to have any sort of claims of negligence, which I think is not a great thing to put up as a standard — to discredit someone’s experience just because they weren’t physically abused.”
The lawsuit sought $10 million in punitive and compensatory damages stemming from a trip that Mr. Soloviev and his Ross School classmates took to Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Patagonia in early 2020. The suit named four faculty members and the school itself.
During the trip, Mr. Soloviev was responsible for documenting the group’s activities on Instagram, but the lawsuit alleged that a Ross faculty member “forcibly obtained” the Instagram user name and password “by threatening Hayden with retaliation” in the form of a failing grade. It also alleged that another faculty member “did not do anything to stop” such bullying and even “participated” in it.
Judge Condon wrote in his Dec. 7 dismissal that the Instagram account was reassigned “due to plaintiff not doing what he was asked for the project.”
The lawsuit also charged that the students were allowed to consume alcohol as a celebration of climbing a glacier, a fact that the Ross School did not dispute. Newly released video evidence, Mr. Soloviev said, shows that the students consumed more than “a thimbleful” of whiskey — as Judge Condon had written in dismissing the case — as proof of negligence.
Charles Abelmann, Ross’s interim head of school, said in a statement on Monday that “we respect the right of the family to do what the legal process allows and are confident that the ruling will stand.”
Mr. Soloviev, now a New York University student, is involved in his family’s charitable foundation, which recently presented a donation to the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center. The Soloviev family is said to be one of the largest owners of farmland in the United States, including many acres on the East End.