Neither Maryland public school teachers nor school boards can be sued based on allegations that their negligent handling of student misbehavior caused another student’s injuries, the state’s second highest court has ruled.
In a reported decision filed Tuesday, the Court of Special Appeals held that a 2001 federal law prevents teachers from being sued for their disciplinary decisions unless they acted with willful, reckless or criminal misconduct; gross negligence; or a “conscious, flagrant indifference” to the injured student’s rights.
In addition, Maryland case law barring claims against school boards for providing “negligent education” includes allegations of negligent student discipline, the appellate court held in its 3-0 ruling...
The Court of Special Appeals rendered its decision in Brandon Gambrill et al. v. Board of Education of Dorchester County et al., No. 886, September Term 2019.
A Baltimore jury awarded $5 million this week to the family of a 9-year-old boy who severely broke his leg during a schoolyard football game but was provided only mustard and a washcloth to bite on by public school personnel who neglected to call 911 and left a voicemail for his mother, according to the lawsuit.
Upon hearing the message, Jacob Harvey’s mother drove to Furley Elementary School and sped her son – who had gone into shock – to Good Samaritan Hospital. From there, Jacob was transferred to the University of Maryland’s R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, where he underwent emergency surgery, according to testimony during the Baltimore City Circuit Court trial...
...The jury awarded the $5 million in non-economic damages Monday against Baltimore City Public Schools after finding the negligence of BCPS employees at Furley caused and exacerbated Jacob’s injuries. The award, however, could be reduced to $100,000 and will likely not exceed $785,000 due to Maryland’s statutory caps on non-economic damages...
...BCPS issued a statement Thursday that “while City Schools does not comment on the details of pending litigation, we are reviewing the jury verdict and determining next steps, including a request to modify the amount of the verdict so that it is consistent with state law. In Maryland, school systems are not liable for any amount exceeding $100,000 for injuries like this one that occurred prior to October 2016.”..
The family of a Col. Zadok Magruder High School student is suing the school system after he sustained a fractured skull and was hospitalized for several days after a fight last year.
On Feb. 12, 2019, then-freshman Jacob Van Dyken was involved in a fight with a classmate. The fight — which was recorded by several students who had gathered around the duo to watch — resulted in Van Dyken spending several days at Children’s National Medical Center. He had a fractured skull and at least one blood clot, according to reports from his family.
The family alleges school officials did not call an ambulance for Van Dyken, even though he showed “obvious” signs of trauma, including bleeding from the head and vomiting. Van Dyken had also defecated and urinated on himself as a result of the head injury, according to court documents...
Attorneys are preparing for a November trial stemming from a lawsuit in which a Gaithersburg mother alleges teachers denied her daughter access to her inhaler during an asthma attack during gym class in 2015, leading to the teen’s death.
Georgia Grant-Walton’s lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools says her daughter, Taylor Walton, requested permission to leave gym class twice to get her inhaler from her locker because she was having trouble breathing, according to court documents. The teacher, Karen Philbin, allegedly denied Taylor’s request each time, court documents say.
After the second request, 14-year-old Taylor left the class at Gaithersburg High School without permission to get her inhaler. Shortly after, she was found lying unconscious on the floor outside the gym.
Gaithersburg High School’s staff administered CPR and first aid before calling an ambulance, according to court documents. Taylor was pronounced dead upon arrival at a hospital about 4 miles away.
Grant-Walton is seeking more than $20 million in damages from her daughter’s death, which occurred on Nov. 30, 2015...
On Richard Montgomery High School’s Artificial Turf
Good evening members of the Board of Education and Superintendent Smith. You may remember at the CIP hearings in November a student from Richard
Montgomery who plays on the soccer team as a goalie, Molly Winchenbach. She
testified about the unusual abrasiveness of RM’s new artificial turf field and the
resulting injuries suffered by student athletes. She is my daughter. She would be
here tonight to give you this update and make this plea herself, but she is at practice. High school athletes never seem to have a season off these days.
To MCPS’s credit, after Molly’s testimony, they sent out samples of RM’s and Whitman’s artificial turf for independent testing to a lab in Canada. Both
fields had been installed at the same time using the same organic Zeofill rock/sand mix but their effect on the athletes was drastically different with RM’s field causing substantially more serious abrasion injuries. That different experience of
the athletes was confirmed by the objective tests. Although in my meeting with the Director of Construction and Director of Athletics back in February to go over the results of the tests, I was not permitted to keep a copy, I wrote down the pertinent
results right after the meeting, so my numbers are within a few points. There was agreement in the room that the results were shocking. The abrasiveness of the field
was measured against FIFA’s standard of 30.
Old crumb rubber fields tested a 3.
Whitman’s field tested a 20. RM’s field tested 128! Four times the FIFA standard! The lab tests also figured out why – the volcanic rock particles used in the RM field Zeofill were much larger than those used at Whitman, and at RM, the rock was layered with the sand like a cake, rather than all mixed together, as it was at Whitman.
Now that MCPS has verified what we have been saying all along – there is
something very wrong with the RM turf – it is so abrasive, it is tearing the skin off the athletes, what are you going to do about it? MCPS thought that perhaps they
had solved the problem for this spring. They had removed some of the fill and
tried to mix up the layers more by deep tining it. The plan then was to just replace
the offending larger particle fill with the smaller particle fill gradually with regular
monthly maintenance. But, I’m here to tell you, on behalf of my daughter and the
other student athletes who are using and will be using this field in the fall
regularly, that MCPS’s remediation plan is not aggressive enough. I’ve provided
you with a picture of what happened to Molly’s leg the first time she slid on the
turf this spring to stop a ball coming into the goal. The RM turf scraped off the top layer of about 6 inches of her skin. This cannot be the conditions under which you
expect student athletes to play. While all athletes may not experience the
abrasiveness of the RM field the same, it is particularly damaging to the students,
like Molly in positions, like goalie, who have to slide on the turf all the time. She
plays on turf all over the county, both indoor and outdoor, and only receives
serious injuries like this from the RM turf.
I understand that MCPS is in the process of asking the manufacturer of the
turf how much it will cost to replace all or most of the fill in RM’s turf all at once
over the summer. I am asking you to ensure this remediation gets done
immediately. (And any cost should not come out of CIP funds already allocated
to capital expenditures for RM, which needs substantial expansion over the
summer just to keep up with its ever growing student population.) You owe it to
the students whose health and safety you say are your top priority. You now know this turf is 4x the standard for abrasiveness, you know the reasons why it is so abrasive, and you know what you need to do to fix it. Don’t waste anymore time while more students get hurt. Do it now.
Thank you.
