The Maine Supreme Judicial Court

This appeal presents two issues for decision: (1) is a report of a neutral investigator, retained to provide a report to a governmental entity in a specific personnel matter, petitioning activity pursuant to 14 M.R.S. § 556 (2018), Maine’s anti-Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (anti-SLAPP) statute, and (2) is an employee of a law firm and the law firm itself, when hired to act as an agent of a governmental entity to provide a report on a specific personnel matter, protected by the employee immunity provision of the Maine Tort Claims Act (MTCA), 14 M.R.S. §§ 8108-8118 (2018)?

Defamation plaintiff’s allegations

From 2005 to 2009, the University of Southern Maine (USM) employed Susan Hamilton as the interim director for USM’s Multi-Cultural Student Affairs (MSA). In 2009, Hamilton became the full-time coordinator of the MSA.

In 2015, a USM student began an internship in Hamilton’s program. Sometime after that, another student made a complaint alleging that Hamilton had entered the student government office in October of 2015 and questioned students there about a particular incident on campus. Following the complaint, USM’s dean of students met with the student intern to discuss what she observed while working with Hamilton, and she coerced the intern into preparing a written statement about Hamilton. USM initiated a formal investigation, retaining Chapman, a nonattorney policy consultant for Drummond Woodsum, to serve as investigator. USM had frequently retained Chapman to conduct investigations.

Chapman presented an investigative report to USM, which concluded that Hamilton “engaged in both discriminatory (race and gender) and non-discriminatory harassment (Student Government) as articulated in USM polices [sic] and procedure.” The report concluded that “Ms. Hamilton’s statements have created a hostile environment for [the intern] and for other (not all) students and employees.

On February 28, 2016, USM’s office of equity and compliance forwarded a copy of Chapman’s report to USM’s vice president for enrollment management. The next day, USM provided a copy of Chapman’s report to Hamilton. On March 18, 2016, USM’s vice president for enrollment management sent a letter to Hamilton indicating that she accepted the report’s finding of harassment and discrimination.

Hamilton appealed the finding.