The Issaquah Valley Senior Center’s executive director, board of directors and others attached to the center were hit with a defamation lawsuit after a lawyer representing two banned members and a former employee filed the paperwork Sept. 8.

“Today the senior center board and the senior center executive director were served and we are going to sue them,” plaintiff David Waggoner said in public comment at that evening’s Issaquah City Council meeting.

The lawsuit alleges that executive director Courtney Jaren, the senior center’s nine board members and four additional individuals went into “defamation ‘hyperdrive,'” and participated in a campaign to falsely accuse former members Waggoner and Regina Poirier of harassment and elder abuse of late senior center member Lee Scheeler.

Affidavits submitted by Scheeler’s daughter-in-law, Peggy Scheeler, and center Veterans Liaison Joel Estey accused Poirier of attempting to use her relationship with Scheeler to take ownership of his house and make other material gains. When he cut off contact with Poirier, other seniors conspired to make him meet with her, Peggy Scheeler’s affidavit alleged — a third plaintiff and former senior center driver Gregory Wagner was named as one of these conspirators.

An additional affidavit, whose author was redacted from copies provided to the Reporter, accused Waggoner of interrupting a birthday party at the senior center to lob accusations of financial misconduct and poor performance at Jaren.

Those affidavits were used to support Poirier’s and Waggoner’s ban from the senior center property in February and April, respectively, and silence questions about the nonprofit’s finances, attorney Inez Petersen wrote in the filing. Further posters and informal documents, notably a June newsletter that did not name any of the plaintiffs in the defamation case, continued elder abuse allegations against Poirier, Waggoner, Wagner and others despite the fact no formal report had been made to the state, Petersen wrote.

Jaren and the senior center board of directors retained attorney David Adler prior to the lawsuit’s filing. Adler told the Reporter weeks before the filing that a lack of names in the June newsletter meant no one had been defamed.

Petersen responded that wasn’t the case, as the public nature of the dispute had made her clients’ names common knowledge by that time.

“When the Defendants use the term ‘the small group’ or an equivalent, and then in the same document they also use the term ‘the small group, including the two who received trespass orders,’ and the readers have recently been exposed to a front-page news article about the trespasses with the name identified, the correlation between the two terms is easily made,” Petersen wrote.

The plaintiffs in the defamation suit are seeking $100,000 in damages from each defendant and attorney fees.