Shadonna Hale (Of Counsel-Baltimore) and Ashley Wetzel (Associate-Baltimore) represented an attorney and his law firm in a defamation case – a consolidation of three separate lawsuits relating to three minors’ allegations that they were molested by a prominent rabbi: (1) the rabbi sued alleged victims, their families and members of the press for publicizing the allegations; (2) our clients represented the alleged victims and their families in two counter-lawsuits against the rabbi and the camp where the alleged abuse took place; (3) the alleged victims’ cases were consolidated with the rabbi’s case as counter-claims. The plaintiff rabbi sought to amend his complaint to add our clients as additional defendants. In their motion to amend, the plaintiffs alleged that throughout the course of representing their clients, the law firm and attorney posted defamatory statements on their Facebook pages and made defamatory comments to reporters that were published in newspaper articles. In opposition to the motion for leave to amend, Shadonna and Ashley argued that the plaintiffs’ baseless claims were a thinly veiled attempt to disqualify the law firm and attorney as counsel for their clients. Allowing the plaintiffs to file the proposed amended complaint would be futile because the claims had no merit and would severely prejudice the alleged victims and their parents. The court agreed that it was inappropriate to allow the plaintiffs to bring other parties’ counsel into the case and denied the motion for leave to amend.