YOUNGSTOWN — Former Canfield schools superintendent Alex Geordan has filed objections to the May 9 ruling of a Mahoning County magistrate that statements Canfield police Chief Charles Colucci made in 2019 about Geordan were supported by the results of a sheriff’s investigation and were not false or malicious.

Geordan on Monday filed objections to the ruling of Magistrate James Melone of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in which Melone said the civil suit filed by Geordan should be dismissed without a trial.

Geordan is appealing Melone’s decision to Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, for whom Melone works.

Melone ruled that Colucci made accurate statements to the public in November 2019 regarding the results of an investigation by the sheriff’s office of a Sept. 12, 2019, incident involving a student. Colucci asked the sheriff’s office to investigate the incident.

“There is no evidence that Chief Colucci issued the public statement ‘with knowledge that (the statement) was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not,'” Melone’s ruling states.

The ruling added that Geordan “has failed to assert any evidence establishing that the statements were false, let alone reaching the required threshold of showing ‘actual malice.'” The ruling stated that it is “reasonable” for Colucci, in his role as Canfield police chief, “to advise the public as to the result of the investigation. Transparency in an investigation such as this is paramount in maintaining the public’s trust.”

Geordan resigned as superintendent in December 2019 in the wake of criticism over his handling of such matters. He filed his lawsuit against Colucci in 2020.

The conflict between Geordan and Colucci came to a head in November 2019, when Colucci released a document detailing 22 incidents dating back to 2012 to back up claims that the school administration “has a history of failing to report serious threats and other significant incidents to law enforcement.”

The document mentioned a Nov. 17, 2018, incident in which a confidential source notified (a Canfield Police Department school resource officer) that a note was discovered at the middle school reading, ‘I want to kill my math teacher.’ The student was suspended from school and the (school resource officer) was never notified,” the report states.

It also stated that Geordan “downplayed” a Sept. 12, 2019, incident involving a sixth-grader who threatened to shoot another boy student 16 times in the back of the head. The report also documented an investigation the police department and Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office carried out regarding the Sept. 12 incident.

A conclusion of the document was that Geordan “misled the community” three times in an all-call message to parents about the Sept. 12 incident and that Canfield Village Middle School Assistant Principal Mike Flood gave changing versions of the incident to investigators.

Geordan’s objection to Melone’s ruling states that Geordan filed an affidavit in the litigation that “calls the truth of Colucci’s defamatory statement (about Geordan) into question and shows that Colucci acted with ‘actual malice.'”

The filing, by attorney David Engler, states that “since the magistrate did not address the facts to which Geordan swore in his affidavit, the magistrate failed to consider the inferences that could reasonably be drawn from those facts.”

The Geordan filing asks D’Apolito “to review the entire record in the light most favorable to Geordan, then reverse the magistrate’s decision” to dismiss Geordan’s lawsuit and instead “set this case for a full trial on the merits of Geordan’s defamation claim.”