Seven months before former Richland County sheriff’s deputy Ben Fields made national news by pulling a student from her chair and tossing her in a Spring Valley High School classroom, Fields caused the unlawful arrest of an innocent woman who was helping another Spring Valley student, a lawsuit in federal court alleges.

Although Fields got an arrest warrant for the woman, Holly Johnson, a preschool teacher, on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a Richland County grand jury – without saying why – refused to indict her, the lawsuit said.

“The grand jury didn’t even find the bare minimum standard of probable cause in the arrest against my client,” said Johnson’s attorney, Eric Bland of Columbia.

The suit seeks unspecified actual and punitive damages and asks for a jury trial.

The three defendants that Johnson is suing – the Richland County sheriff’s department, the Richland School District 2 and Fields – will contest the case, according to legal papers. Defendants’ lawyers declined comment, saying the case is pending.

Sheriff Leon Lott, in a Friday interview, however, said his department internal affairs unit investigated Fields and found he acted within the law in the Johnson case. Not all facts have come out, Lott said.

“We are very confident that once the facts come out in court, justice will be served,” Lott said.

Johnson’s lawsuit said instead of inserting himself into an out-of-school, domestic situation, Fields should have turned the matter over to “the appropriate agencies.”

Bland also said Johnson’s improper arrest should have alerted the sheriff that Fields was overly aggressive.

“If they had properly investigated my case, the incident in October (at Spring Valley) never would have happened,” Bland said.

The lawsuit’s allegations concern nine days in March 2015. A 17-year-old female Spring Valley student left her mother’s home and went to live with Johnson, who is married and has two children. One of Johnson’s children, also 17, was the girl’s boyfriend.

The student refused to back home because of difficulties with her mother; Johnson took her in because she had nowhere else to go, the lawsuit alleges.

At that point, the student’s mother enlisted the help of Fields – a deputy and school resource officer at Spring Valley – to help get the student back home. Fields persuaded a Spring Valley administrator, Tony Farr, to help him “interrogate” the student, the lawsuit said.

For several days, Fields “launched an aggressive campaign of intimidation and harassment using Sheriff’s Department ‘scare tactics’ against the student, Johnson and her husband, Scott Johnson, the lawsuit said. The student repeatedly told Fields she was safe and didn’t want to go home, the lawsuit said.

On March 26, as Scott Johnson was getting ready to ask the sheriff’s department to do an internal investigation, six Richland County deputies showed up at the Johnsons’ house and arrested Holly Johnson, the lawsuit said. Meanwhile, Fields persuaded a magistrate to issue a warrant charging Holly Johnson with contributing the the delinquency of a minor, the lawsuit said.

Johnson spent a night in jail and was released the next day.

In its written response to the suit, Richland 2 notes that only seven of the 169 paragraphs in Johnson’s lawsuit refer specifically to Farr, and no allegation says Farr harmed the student “in any way or took any action outside his duties as an administrator,” the school district says in a legal memorandum.

Its its response, the sheriff’s department asserts that nothing was improper about Johnson’s arrest and that a magistrate did find “probable cause” to issue a warrant.

Attorney Robert Garfield of Columbia represents the sheriff’s department and Fields. Attorneys Kathryn Long Mahoney and Jasmine Drain represent Richland 2.

Last October, after a video showing Fields tossing a Spring Valley student went viral, Lott fired Fields. He had been with the department since 2004 and a school resource officer since 2008.

Since the incident, Fields and the video have become a poster child in a national conversation about the use of force on students by school resource officers. Earlier this week, the U.S. Justice Department announced an agreement with Lott to upgrade training and monitoring for Lott’s 87 resource officers – an action Lott said he welcomes.