A misidentified US Marine is asking a New York judge to remove or redact a court filing that wrongly linked him to a Cornell sexual assault lawsuit, saying the error led to death threats against his family.
Sergeant Matthew Ingalls shares the name of one of the seven men accused in the case, but his lawyer says he has no connection to the allegations and has never attended Cornell University.
The attorney says Mr Ingalls was serving on active duty at a military base in North Carolina when the alleged assault took place.
The dispute began when lawyers representing Jane Doe included an address associated with Mr Ingalls’s family in an original court document. They later acknowledged the mistake and submitted a corrected version containing a different address.
However, the original filing remains on the court docket. In a new application, Mr Ingalls is seeking to have it struck from the record or, at the very least, to have the incorrect address concealed.
His lawyer says the error has had serious consequences, with Mr Ingalls and his relatives allegedly subjected to harassment and death threats. Phone numbers belonging to family members were also published, resulting in further threatening calls.
The filing says the situation became so serious that law enforcement officers had to be present at the wrongly identified address because the family feared for its safety.
Mr Ingalls’s lawyer argues that an innocent military family should not continue to suffer because of a mistake in a case with which it has no involvement.
