Webcam

Despite a hostile initial response from the Lower Merion School District, the lawyer handling the webcam lawsuit against it repeated his demand Monday to be paid more than $400,000 while the case is pending. In an Aug. 12 federal court filing, the district attacked attorney Mark S. Haltzman for a bill that it said "far exceeds the bounds of reasonableness" and for suing in the first place instead of going directly to school officials. Concerns over the webcam surveillance of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins, the district said, could have been handled without the expense of litigation.

The attorney for a former Lower Merion student who accused the district of spying on her via a laptop camera - the same accusation that won her brother a big settlement from the district - has asked a judge for permission to leave the case. Mary Elizabeth Bogan stated in her U.S. District Court filing Tuesday "that counsel has irreconcilable conflict with the client. " Last week, Bogan filed a complaint on behalf of Paige Robbins, 19, asserting that, according to a 2010 deposition given by Lindy Matsko, Harriton High School's assistant vice principal, the school district "remotely accessed the webcam feature on the laptop issued to the plaintiff while she was in the bathroom, or in the nude, or partially dressed or sleeping or in her bedroom in a compromised state.

The Lower Merion School District is considering a new written policy to ban all webcam surveillance by district officials. The proposed rule, part of a slate of new technology regulations introduced Monday night at a school board meeting at Penn Valley Elementary School, follows months of controversy in the wake of one student's privacy lawsuit over webcam monitoring. Also under consideration are stringent guidelines for when the student-issued computers' tracking software can be activated - only with written permission from a student and parent after a reported computer disappearance - and for the circumstances under which district officials can access files on the computers if misuse is suspected.

The parents of a Rutgers University student who killed himself after his roommate used a webcam to see him kissing another man have decided not to sue the university or anyone else involved in the case, preferring to focus on the foundation started in Ryan Clementi's name. "They're just in a spot now where they have this opportunity - because of the fact that the media has made this case so well-known - to do some very good things through the foundation," Paul Mainardi, an attorney for Joseph and Jane Clementi of Ridgewood, N.J., said Friday.

Tuesday didn't feel all that different, Blake Robbins said. Sure, he might have heard a comment or two in the Harriton High School halls. One kid flashed him a thumbs-down, Robbins said, but he couldn't be certain why. Otherwise, the school day was routine, said Robbins, a 16-year-old junior. He took home his school-issued laptop. Even used its webcam to snap a photo, he said. But Tuesday wasn't typical. About 3 p.m., Robbins and his parents signed papers to settle their headline-getting claim that the Lower Merion School District used a laptop webcam to spy on him in their Penn Valley home.

Parents of several Lower Merion School District students filed a motion Friday opposing a bid for a class-action lawsuit over the district's practice of secretly activating webcams on student laptops. The motion points out that nearly 500 parents of between 500 and 600 district high school students have signed a petition opposing certification of the original lawsuit as a class-action matter. "They simply do not want to be represented by plaintiffs or their counsel in their pursuit of a litigation strategy that protracts rather than resolves the litigation, and that harms rather than benefits the students," the motion says.

Opening statements are set for Friday in the trial of former Rutgers University freshman Dharun Ravi, who is charged with using a laptop webcam to secretly view his college roommate in a sexual encounter with another man. Jury selection in the high-profile case was completed Thursday in Middlesex County Superior Court in New Brunswick. The trial is expected to last up to four weeks. Ravi's roommate, Tyler Clementi, 18, committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge on Sept.

A former Rutgers University freshman pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy in the webcast of his roommate's sexual encounter with another man. The roommate committed suicide days afterward. Dharun Ravi, 19, of Plainsboro, said nothing during his first court appearance, a brief arraignment hearing at Middlesex County Superior Court in New Brunswick. His attorney, Steven Altman, entered the plea for him. Altman and Ravi declined to comment afterward.

Legal fees in the Lower Merion School District's webcam case are inching toward $1 million, a sum that could end up handed to local taxpayers. A district spokesman on Monday disclosed that the bills to defend the use of the now-disabled laptop tracking system have grown to about $780,000. At the same time, the lawyer whose lawsuit over the webcam monitoring drew worldwide attention disclosed in court papers that his fees - costs he is likely to ask Lower Merion to pay - were more than $148,000 and climbing.

Lawyers for the Lower Merion School District and the first student to sue over its use of webcams to track laptops met Thursday with a federal judge but would not say if they were any closer to resolving their dispute. Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., the attorney for the district, and Mark Haltzman, representing Harriton High School junior Blake Robbins, declined to comment as they left Senior District Judge Jan E. DuBois' chambers in Philadelphia. The 75-minute, closed-door meeting followed a flurry of filings from both sides that signaled new hurdles in the five-month-old case.