The Texas Supreme Court has refused to revive a defamation claim by “Clock Boy” Ahmed Mohamed that had been dismissed by a lower court.
Word comes from the American Freedom Law Center, which defended several public figures who were sued for defamation for their comments about the case.
The 15-year-old brought a homemade clock to his Irving, Texas, middle school, that looked like a bomb, triggering a scare that led to his arrest and suspension.
The defamation suit brought by the boy’s father, Mohamed Mohamed, named the Center for Security Policy and Jim Hanson, who at the time worked for CSP, along with defendants Ben Shapiro, the local Fox affiliate, Glenn Beck and Beck’s production company for statements Hanson had made on Beck’s program.
In July, the Texas Court of Appeal upheld the trial court’s earlier dismissal of the case and its award of attorney’s fees. Mohamed’s attorneys then filed a petition for review asking the Texas Supreme Court to re-examine the matter.
That court now has rejected the request.
Hanson said the clock incident and the subsequent media frenzy fueled by the boy’s father, a prominent Muslim leader, was driven by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group in the United States that promotes “civilization jihad” through lawsuits.
The American Freedom Law Center and local counsel Pete Rowe at the trial court filed a motion to dismiss on behalf of CSP and Hanson. The trial court granted the motion and all claims against all defendants were ultimately dismissed.
The appeals court not only affirmed the dismissal but affirmed the award of nearly $200,000 for attorneys’ fees and costs, including AFLC’s $67,238.50 in legal fees at the trial level and $130,000 in conditional legal fees for the appellate work.
Attempting to keep the case alive, attorneys for Mohamed filed a petition for review to the Texas Supreme Court.
AFLC legal counsel David Yerushalemi said Mohamed “is a bad actor ill-served by his less than competent legal counsel.”
“This formula when suing an AFLC client will invariably fail, and we will most certainly pursue all legal channels to enforce and collect our award of legal fees,” he said. Should Mohamed show up in Texas or any other state and think he and his son will live off the profits of their infamy, rest assured we will be there with a sheriff to take possession of those ill-gotten gains.”
The legal team said in a statement: “AFLC was formed in large measure to take on Islamists like CAIR who use and abuse the legal system with their cynical form of lawfare to undermine our constitutional liberties – notably free speech. We have confronted these lawsuits across the country in federal and state courts and have defeated CAIR and its minions at every turn. When appropriate, we have won sanctions. This lawsuit has proven to be no different. We will continue to confront CAIR and other Islamists organizations in any and all legal fora.”
Another lawsuit by the Mohameds against the city of Irving, Texas, and its school district also had been dismissed.
The case developed when the boy took to school a homemade device that looked like a bomb.
The youth, after his arrest, held news conferences, was invited by then-President Obama to the White House, bragged about his overseas travels and then alerted reporters when he was returning to the United States. The Council on American Islamic Relations, which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror-financing case, was involved in the publicity campaign.
Mohamed claimed he suffered “severe psychological trauma” because of the case, which resulted in a month-long world tour that included:
1. Honor by then-President Obama on social media and an invitation to the White House, where he meets the president on the South Lawn at an astronomy event;
2. A meeting with Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, at a science fair;
3. Praise by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg;
4. Being named the beneficiary of a $20,000 fundraising campaign;
5. An invitation by a Canadian astronaut to visit;
6. An appearance with Dr. Oz;
7. Praise from MIT scientist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein for being “my ideal student”;
8. A proclamation by New York City of “Ahmed Day”;
9. A visit with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide.
10. A visit with Turkey’s then-Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu;
11. A trip to the Middle East during which, as the Huffington Post described it, he “hung with Jordan’s Queen Rania”;
12. A visit to Mecca as an honored guest of Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
