A recent lawsuit filed by three Connecticut parents alleges that Westport school officials have downplayed an incident from 2022 involving two students who were hospitalized after eating cannabis-infused candy they found on a school bus. Though the suit is unique, given that two of the parents also regularly appear on the small screen.
Scott Foley and Marika Foley each star in “Grey’s Anatomy” and filed the lawsuit alongside a third parent in early November, according to a Fox 61 report. The complaint was filed against the Westport Board of Education, Board Chairman Lee Goldstein, Superintendent Thomas Scarice, bus company DATTCO, Inc., DATTCO President Donald Devivo and the bus driver Berne Alphonse, who was on duty when the incident occurred.
According to the lawsuit, the parents claim that school officials had not been “fully transparent” about what happened, allowing rumors to circulate which resulted in their children being bullied and called “drug addicts.”
The incident took place Dec. 12, 2022, as the Foleys’ son and a friend were riding the school bus home from their elementary school and found a bag of candy which had been left by another student, though it turned out to be infused with THC according to the complaint.
As outlined in the lawsuit, a police investigation concluded that the bag was left on the bus by a 15-year-old high school student who previously rode the bus.
The friend of the Foleys’ son was staying with the family while her parents were out of the country and reportedly told the nanny they ate some chocolate they found on the bus, the lawsuit says. After about an hour, the children complained of dizziness, stomach problems and confusion.
The nanny then called the Foleys and said she was worried the children had “eaten something they shouldn’t have eaten,” according to the lawsuit.
When the parents arrived back at the house, Scott Foley said his son’s friend had “lost all of the color from her face, her eyes as sunken with dark circles under them, and the whites of her eyes as bloodshot,” the lawsuit says. The Foleys’ son was also “looking sickly, lethargic” and had trouble walking in a straight line, the suit states.
The Foleys took the children to Westport Urgent Care and then to Norwalk Hospital, where doctors confirmed they had ingested cannabis. The lawsuit states that the children remained at the hospital for several hours and that the Foleys’ son was intoxicated for more than 30 hours total.
The parents said they were disappointed in the response of the school district, claiming they had numerous calls with Superintendent Scarice after the incident occurred asking him to issue a statement to explain what occurred. Scarice said he was unable to disclose that the students ingested cannabis because of privacy concerns, according to the lawsuit.
The parents also said that the school district would not show them video footage of their children eating the infused candy until the Westport Police Department could supply a search warrant for the footage, which they did on Feb. 3, 2023.
However, Scarice did address the situation in a Board of Education meeting on Dec. 19, 2022. He shared that students “became ill after ingesting what had appeared to be candy,” though he did not explicitly state that the candy had cannabis in it. He nodded to the importance of reminding children not to consume food from an unknown source and nodded to retail cannabis sales launching the following month.
In the meeting, he also highlighted that he “cannot comment and I will not comment on specific students because I have an obligation legally but also ethically to maintain privacy.”
The suit also claims that DATTCO, Inc. had not adhered to its policy to provide a “safe and orderly environment for students,” also alleging that the company and bus driver violated its contract within Westport, namely that drivers are required to inspect buses before picking up students at each school.
The suit is seeking unspecified damages against the Board of education, Scarice, chair Lee Goldstein and the DATTCO bus company.
