Why would they necessarily be able to make such statements a prori? There are thousands of lawsuits filed every year. Relatively speaking, almost none of them get any press attention.
Agreed. There are tons of cases where people make ridiculous assertions. If it was legal - they should have raised the defense - that is the purpose of a defense attorney. Sure the client could order them not to, but to suggest after the fact this was stupid - with 50/50 hind sight - is silly. You can’t predict ahead of time which ones will get press coverage.
If the defense is ridiculous - then (that defense) will be dismissed in summary judgement.
Thousands of 12 year olds are not being accused of complicity in their own rapes every day. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is a bad idea.
A strong defense is great. A defense that makes you look like an immoral disgusting fuck is not all that great.
“If it is legal, then they should do it” is not really a philosophy I would think is a good one. It may have been legal for the defense team to raise the possibility that the 12 year old was at fault for her own rape. The fact that it was legal for them to do so does not make it therefore a good idea.
This defense was not merely ridiculous - I would have no problem with a ridiculous defense. The problem was, this defense made the client look like an amoral pack of shitheads, who were willing to destroy a 12 year old rape victim in order to save themselves some money. Bad idea for the client.
Not Catholic, are you? 
What they should have done was explain to the public that every dollar of a judgement against the school district would ultimately come out of the tax payers’ wallets. It oughta be obvious, but people don’t often think these things through. THEN (the locals at least) they would be fine with claims that she was a serial rapist of school teachers.
An answer is not supposed to be supported by evidence. It’s a response that has to be filed within 30 days of receiving a complaint (under the California rules of civil procedure).
By the time a case has been assigned to defense counsel, they might have 15 days left to respond*, especially if they’re outside counsel and not the school board’s staff attorneys. They don’t have an opportunity to depose witnesses and conduct discovery before responding; they throw shit at the wall and hope they can make it stick later.
She’s an adult now, and it’s a bit silly to claim the school board is destroying her by making their attorneys say unpleasant things when she was already molested for four-odd years.
Anyway, it’s a public school district. What the hell do they care about PR?
*in some cases, such as where the plaintiff makes a demand beforehand, the defendant might have more time to get its act together, but usually that’s not how it works.