In a shocking twist, the Southern District of New York dismissed all charges and imposed monetary sanctions on Thursday against the plaintiff, Andrea Rossbach, in her case against Montefiore Medical Center, Norman Morales, and Patricia Veintimilla after it was found that the plaintiff fabricated text messages that were seen as key evidence.
The Court found that the plaintiff’s “evidence” was falsified. The image contains numerous messages supposedly written by the defendant Morales with language that could be considered as sexual harassment, but experts found that the emoji he allegedly used is simply not available for use on her iPhone 5. This is because an iPhone 5 can only run up to iOS 10, while this version of the “heart eyes” emoji is found on iOS 13 or later.
According to the filing, the plaintiff alleged that she took a picture of her older, cracked phone, yet the picture is clearly a screenshot. An expert found that her screen did not in fact have “ink bleed” or flickering, and the passcode she provided was false.
The Court said that this discovery was “overwhelming” and that “these inconsistent statements undermined the credibility of her testimony regarding the image.” Upon further investigation, experts found that the screenshot was not taken by any iPhone model, and that the text messages do not resemble those on any version of the iOS operating system.
The Court proclaimed that “Rossbach willfully and in bad faith fabricated evidence in this action and attempted to mislead the Court regarding her actions,” and that she engaged in an “unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate the action.”
This case is being dismissed with prejudice on account of the “overwhelming evidence” that the plaintiff tried to defraud the Court. Additionally, monetary sanctions are being imposed upon the plaintiff’s law firm Altaras and DSLG, and the plaintiff herself will be sanctioned in the form of “defendants’ attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses associated with addressing Rossbach’s misconduct.”
The plaintiff is represented by Daniel Altaras of Derek Smith Law Group, PLLC. The defendants are represented by Littler Mendelson, PC.