A Florida appeals court has ruled that a family may sue a school district and a Disney subsidiary that developed the community of Celebration for allegedly false representation in marketing materials that the public school in the area was “cutting-edge.” The family decided that the schools weren’t up to their particular standards, and has chosen a private school. (Kelly Cramer, Miami Daily Business Review, “Parents Can Sue Disney [sic] Over School Sales Pitch”, Dec. 12; Simon v. The Celebration Co. opinion) (via Jacobs).
The case represents an expansion of tort liability in two ways. First, adjectives like “best practices” are usually considered opinions that can’t lead to a cause of action. Second, though the court disclaims any willingness to create an “educational malpractice” tort, it is effectively creating a rule that a plaintiff may claim educational malpractice so long as the complaint instead uses magic words like “fraud” or “misrepresentation.” Any Florida school district that has a web page trumpeting a school’s accomplishments (or, as in this case, the aspirations of a school) is now potentially liable; homeowners now do not dare make any statements about the schools in a neighborhood.
A note about procedure: the decision was made on a motion to dismiss; the appellate court ruled simply that the complaint stated a valid cause of action and could proceed. What will likely happen is that the defendants will prevail at a later stage in the case without paying damages. When that happens, ATLA or other opponents of tort reform will point to the final result and claim that the system works.
But that’s not so. The defendants will now spend tens of thousands of dollars on additional legal expenses getting to the next stage, even if that next stage is appealing to the Florida Supreme Court and getting this decision reversed. Meanwhile, unless the Florida Supreme Court or legislature steps in, the appellate court has created a new cause of action, and there will be future claims made against sellers of homes and school districts. And the school districts will have to spend money defending themselves against these claims. And mistakes will be made in the court system: school districts that didn’t do anything wrong will be asked to pay damages.
Now, certainly, the plaintiffs’ description of the Celebration school’s unstructured and undisciplined environment sounds like an educational disaster. And perhaps we as a society want parents to have the right to sue schools when they are dissatisfied with the results of the school system, and to have these decisions expensively litigated with lawyers and juries and hired experts, and to have taxpayer dollars spent defending these suits and paying damages when the schools fail. But if so, isn’t that a decision that should be made by a legislature than by a 2-1 decision of an intermediate state court?
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