CANTON, Ohio — Former members of the football coaching staff at Canton McKinley High School have filed a new lawsuit claiming the school district and its insurance company forced through a "sham" settlement in the wake of an incident that allegedly saw the staff force a player to eat pepperoni pizza against his religious beliefs.
Head coach Marcus Wattley and six of his assistants were fired in June of 2021 after the teen's family claimed he was required to eat pork after missing a weight room session. According to the player's father and family attorney Ed Gilbert, this violated his Hebrew Israelite beliefs.
The student's family later filed both state and federal complaints against the coaches as well as the Canton City School District, alleging a violation of First Amendment rights. An out-of-court settlement was eventually reached in 2023, with the district agreeing to pay the family $125,000 in damages.
However, by that time the coaches had been dismissed from the federal lawsuit, and therefore had no say over the final terms of the settlement. The attorney representing the coaches, Fairlawn-based Peter Pattakos, is now accusing Canton Superintendent Jeffrey Talbert, lawyer Kathryn Perrico, and Liberty Mutual insurance of "unlawful collusion" with Gilbert in an effort to "undermine" his clients' own lawsuit against the school.
According to Pattakos, the settlement agreement of $125,000 was much higher than what the player's family had asked for $71,500). The new lawsuit, brought Wednesday in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas, alleges this was part of a conspiracy by the defendants to make it seem as though the player's claims of mistreatment had merit, even though the Canton City School District did not officially admit to wrongdoing.
Wattley and five of the former assistants have filed a separate lawsuit in Stark County claiming defamation by both the player's family as well as the school district. Talbert is one of the defendants in that case, with Perrico representing him.
Pattakos has consistently denied the coaches did anything wrong, stating in 2021 that the player had been rightfully disciplined for "not fulfilling the role of a team leader" and that he had actually been given the option of eating chicken nuggets in order to avoid consuming pork. Gilbert subsequently released a video of the purported incident, saying it showed Pattakos' nuggets claim was untrue and that "the child was the subject of taunting by several teammates."
In regard to the latest lawsuit, Pattakos released the following statement:
"Perrico's and Talbert's actions in orchestrating this settlement constitute an egregious fraud on the public that strikes at the basic integrity of our legal system. There was no conceivable factual or legal basis for Gilbert's ridiculous 'pork-residue' lawsuit to survive a motion for summary judgment, and that motion could have been put together in a few hours based on the substantial work we had already done for the coaches in proving the meritlessness of these claims. The notion that any substantial settlement would be paid on such demonstrably false accusations is absurd enough, but to pay such a settlement after the Stark County court had ruled that evidence demonstrating the falsity of these accusations supported an actionable defamation claim against Gilbert and his clients is beyond the pale, and leaves no doubt as to Perrico's and Talbert's intent to harm the coaches and mislead the public. It's also shocking that an insurance company of Liberty Mutual's stature would have allowed itself to be manipulated by an obviously conflicted attorney into approving such an obviously collusive and baseless settlement but thankfully Ohio law provides strong remedies to insured parties whose rights under insurance policies are violated in the manner at issue here. Above all else, this case offers an especially telling demonstration of the absurdities that tend to unfold when public officials try to hide the truth from the public and continue to pile lies on top of lies to avoid admitting and accounting for their mistakes. Imagine if the District officials had simply been the ‘adults in the room’ that they were supposed to be in the first place and given Gilbert's and his clients' obviously false accusations the treatment they deserved, instead of using them as an excuse to hand the McKinley football program over to their friend who couldn’t otherwise earn the job on the merits. Not only would the community be better off today due to the continuation of the excellent work that Marcus Wattley and his staff were doing, so would the alleged victim of the pizza incident, and the whole world could have avoided this whole shameful spectacle whereby exemplary coaches and community servants were punished and then continually tarred in public's eye for having tried too hard to help a kid that any other coach would have kicked off the team. We remain proud to seek justice for these coaches and ensure that the truth of this matter is known and learned from in the end."
The former player in question has since been identified as Khalil Walker, a one-time Division I college recruit who now plays for Coffeyville Community College in Kansas. When reached by The Canton Repository, Talbert declined to comment on the litigation.
The sixth fired assistant, ex-defensive coordinator Josh Grimsley, has been named as a defendant in his former colleagues' defamation suit. According to officials, Grimsley was the one who reported the incident to Walker's father.