New York (CNN Business) Attorneys for a Kentucky high school student who was at the center of a viral video controversy are suing the Washington Post, seeking $250 million in damages.

The law firm Hemmer DeFrank Wessels on Tuesday wrote a post on its website that said attorneys Lin Wood and Todd McMurtry have filed the lawsuit on behalf of Nicholas Sandmann against the newspaper for "compensatory and punitive damages."

"This is only the beginning," the law firm said.

Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School, was in Washington on January 18 for the annual March for Life rally wearing a red Make American Great Again hat. In a video that gained national attention, he was in an encounter with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips, who was playing a drum and chanting at the Indigenous Peoples March at the Lincoln Memorial on the same day.

spread across social media. In the second video, a group of black men who identify as members of the Hebrew Israelites is seen taunting the students from Covington Catholic High School with disparaging language and shouting racist slurs at participants of the Indigenous Peoples Rally and other passersby. Another video that surfaced days later provided additional context for the encounter, but the first video had gone viral, touching off widespread accusations of bigotry as photos of the teenagerspread across social media. In the second video, a group of black men who identify as members of the Hebrew Israelites is seen taunting the students from Covington Catholic High School with disparaging language and shouting racist slurs at participants of the Indigenous Peoples Rally and other passersby.

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