US court orders mediation in Indian-origin autistic boy's case

A US court has ordered the Indian-origin parents of an 11-year-old autistic boy and their neighbours, who have filed a case against the couple complaining that the child's aggressiveness made him a public nuisance, to resolve the issue through mediation.
Voicing her dismay in the case, a Santa Clara County judge on Tuesday chastised the parents and their neighbours, imploring them "to end the ugliness and help their children learn a life lesson."
"The question I have for each and every one of you is: Do you want to be solution-oriented and a great role model for your kids? Or do you want to be the opposite of that, and be litigation-oriented," Superior Court Judge Maureen A Folan said.

Both sides later agreed to court-supervised mediation to settle the lawsuit filed against Vidyut Gopal and his wife Parul Agrawal by neighbours -- Kumaran Santhanam and Bindu Pothen and Robert and Marci Flowers, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
After the hearing, Gopal said he was pleased with the judge's suggestion but noted that mediation had been tried previously and failed.
Robert Flowers called the judge's idea "promising."

"We have been absolutely in favor of a solution since long before the suit ever happened," he said.
In their lawsuit filed last summer, the neighbours said that despite repeated appeals by residents on Arlington Court, the parents of the boy with autism had not been able to control his menacing behavior toward others.

Vidyut, an engineer at a Silicon Valley company and Parul - a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, were forced to leave their home of seven years in California's Sunnyvale city after they were slapped with a lawsuit.
When neighbors complained about the child's pulling children's hair, biting a woman and other menacing behavior, the couple had hired caregivers, gave the boy special medication, and put him in therapeutic classes.
The neighbours alleged that the couple did not supervise their son well enough over the years and that after mounting frustration and an attempt to create a neighborhood safety plan in the spring of 2014 fell apart, they were forced to sue.

They are seeking unspecified monetary damages for the harm they say the situation caused their families and want a plan to protect their children.
Though Vidyut and Parul have since moved, they own the home and could return.
The judge called the Silicon Valley parents "incredibly intelligent people" whose combined brain power, creativity and love for their children created an opportunity to "take time out of all this ugliness" and offer "life lessons we want to teach our kids.