The $107,000 was comprised mostly of attorney’s fees.

Let’s assume that the school district offered $7,500. The Plaintiff now has to make a decision as to whether they have a near 100% chance of collecting more than $7,500. If Plaintiff fails to collect the $7,500, then she is responsible for all the District’s costs and attorney’s fees from the time of the offer of judgment forward.
Would a sane Plaintiff chance this, knowing that many of these cases end in Defendants’ verdicts?

It isn’t a panacea. Even under federal rules it merely shifts costs (court reporting and in the court’s discretion expert witness fees), which are a paltry portion of the expense to defend a typical case.

They’re good for contractual cases, but the “offer” mechanism is broken for tort claims. It doesn’t achieve its goal because it doesn’t result in automatic fee shifting.

If the School District at the commencement of the lawsuit offered $10,000, for damages, that would put Plaintiff in a predicament. If she failed to get more than $10,000.00 in damages, then the costs and attorney’s fees get reversed after the offer of judgment is made.

I once represented a physician whose office worker was fired for being excessively absent from her work area during the day. She was actually working for more than one employer in close proximity to each other at the same time.

She got a lawyer and sued him under the Fair Labor Standards Act for his failure to pay her for time and a half for 100 hours of overtime that she allegedly worked. He paid her straight time at $14.00 per hour.

When I was retained, I told him we were giving her an offer of judgment for $700.00 and to abide by the court’s decision to award attorney’s fees. The attorney was the one protesting because under the FLSA, attorney’s fees are mandatory, and those employers that chose to fight may see a $700 payment to the employee and a $70,000 attorney billl at the end of the case.

The judge advised him that under no uncertain terms that he had to accept the offer. He could not get more than was asked, and if he did not take it, the attorney’d fees woudl be reversed at the end of the case.

He took the offer and the judge gave him an additional $250 for drafting filing and serving the Complaint since he ran a mill that routinely did this.

By virtue of the special considerations afforded children because of their age I believe that your premise fails. Children cannot drive, cannot drink adult beverages, before certain ages. If they commit a crime their punishment is less than if committed by an adult. And often because of these exceptions children are not afforded the same protection as an adult (sometimes less, sometimes more). So while people of all ages can exhibit poor judgement, children are afforded more protection from the consequences of that poor judgement.

If a minor murders someone, they will probably be sent to juvie until they are 21. If an 18 y/o commits the same crime he or she will probably get life w/o benefit of parole. I am sure you can think of other examples.

And yes one of the equalizers of parenthood is that in most American jurisdictions if YOUR child exhibits a lack of good judgement you can, within reason, smack ’em on the butt a bit. However, I can attest to the fact that for boys born within the last 35 years corporal punishment is about as effective for changing behavior as is top kill is for stopping the flow of oil a mile below the sea.

In most states children are no longer forced to attend school, their parents can sidestep this by home schooling. As an aside, public education was created for the purpose of turning out good little socialists not necessarily smart soon to be adults.

As stated previously, part of the problem is that the courts and legislators have been all over the place with these issues. Some courts have even held that a child who has been attacked may not defend themselves, as such a defense constitutes equally aggressive behavior. This fact is born out just about every Sunday in the fall as we all know the player who throws the first punch seldom get the flag, it’s the poor sucker who pushes back. Some judges say nasty t-shirts are a no-no, others say that’s their right to freedom of expression, etc., etc.

There are no hard and fast rules that govern these events. The point being that in the case that started this discussion a child behaved badly. Rather than seek redress directly the parents of the aggrieved sought justice from a third party who really had no business getting involved and should have bowed out, letting the parents duke it out however they choose to do so.

And the issue is not so simple. Kids are forced to attend school. So you’re basically saying that society can force a kid to attend a school and be abjectly humiliated? I don’t see that.

People of any age can lack judgment on appropriate behavior. The issue is simply whether they have free speech rights upon which the government may not infringe. If there’s a reason they shouldn’t have these rights, nobody has stated what they are.

If anything, the argument that they are subject to their parents strengthens the argument against the state. Not only are the childrens’ rights being trampled on but their parents’ right to raise their children as they please (absent an individualized finding of abuse or neglect) is trampled on as well.

That said, many of the problems presented to school personnel are the result of a two-fold problem. One, the mixed signals from the politicians, so-called experts, and courts on exactly how a school administrator is to handle any discipline problem and two, the fact that many of these problems are mired in a technology that is out pacing our ability to respond to its effects. And let us not forget a third causative agent, dumb-a$$ parents of the “not-my-little-snowflake” ilk or the helicopter variety or the crack-head, trailer trash, welfare state, “I brought’em in, now you raise’em for me”, type.

Clarity always makes it easier to solve a problem, eh?

Okay, so we’ve gone from an obviously invalid argument to no argument at all. I’m not sure if that’s progress or not.

You can make this same argument about slaves. At one time, their masters could lawfully whip them for misbehavior. And, of course, they’re slaves. Plenty of people weren’t sorry for that either.

If either of you have some kind of reasoned argument, I’d love to hear it.

As for your hypothetical, we have laws against harassment. We have laws against true threats. In your hypothetical, it’s not possible to tell if the “trashing” crossed any of these lines. If you want to live in a civil society, you have to learn how to respond non-violently to other people’s lawful speech.

Let’s look at this case with a hypothetical different result. Girl A makes video off-campus encouraging and containing the trashing of Girl B and subsequently posts on ‘net where all classmates may view. Girl A is suspended, but Girl B is overwhelmed anyway and kills herself (not an unheard of result, right?). School puts into place counseling services etc.

In this scenario, was the suspension of Girl A also a suspension of her civil right to free speech? The video did disrupt the school.