A Florida circuit court judge on Thursday allowed a lawsuit from the parents of Gabby Petito to go ahead against the parents of her deceased fiancé, Brian Laundrie.
Petito and Schmidt are suing the Laundries, claiming they knew Gabby Petito was dead before her body was found but said nothing, which exacerbated their emotional distress.
“The law imposes no such obligation to speak and the state and federal constitution support that. In our society, under our laws, people are free not to speak,” Luca said.
However, Circuit Court Judge Hunter Carroll denied the motion to dismiss the case, noting that the Laundries had not remained silent because they had in fact released a statement about Petito, Fox News reported.
“On behalf of the Laundrie family it is our hope that the search for Miss Petito is successful and that Miss Petito is reunited with her family,” read a statement the Laundries released through an attorney on Sept. 14, 2021.
“For purposes of the motion to dismiss, the Court must assume the Laundries are responsible for authoring the September 14, 2021 statement issued by their attorney,” Carroll said.
The Laundries claimed their statement was “plain,” but in oral arguments heard in court plaintiffs argued that it was knowingly false and “designed to create false hope, and issued by the Laundries who knew Gabby was dead and where her body was located,” Fox News reported.
The judge wrote in the order that “if this is true” then the statement released by the Laundries on Sept. 14, 2021 “was particularly callous and cruel, and it is sufficiently outrageous to state claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
“Because the Laundries’ statement by their attorney in the context of the unique facts of this case is objectively outrageous, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs have stated causes of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress against the Laundries. The Court denies the Laundries’ motion to dismiss,” Carroll wrote.
The parents of Gabby Petito have welcomed the judge’s decision, their lawyer, Patrick Reilly, told Fox News.
“This gives them an opportunity to proceed with their claim for the emotional distress caused by the conduct of the Laundries. Joe and Nichole look forward to discovering the information the Laundries knew about Gabby’s death and her whereabouts, and in particular getting a copy of any correspondence, emails and texts exchanged during the difficult period when Gabby’s whereabouts were unknown,” Reilly said.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for the Laundries said they were “disappointed.”
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