Reader and huge fan Richard Nieporent passes along a story of a West Virginia High School student with a 4.5 GPA suing her teacher and the school board because she didn’t like the grade she received in biology. She was on a school trip on the date a big project was due, and failed to turn it in on time; the teacher failed her on the project because it was late. Naturally, litigation has followed:
“It was the intent of the defendant, Jane Schultz, to punish the minor plaintiff for being in student council by intentionally ruining her ‘A’ average,” the lawsuit says.
The student’s parents are seeking an injunction, punitive damages, and damages for “emotional stress, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of scholarship potential.”
If causing emotional stress to high school students by giving them bad grades is actionable, I think an awful lot of teachers will be in trouble.
Bill McGinley, legal counsel for the West Virginia Education Association, said the union would be watching the lawsuit closely.
“We’re very interested in this,” he said. “Especially in the notion of protecting the integrity of teacher’s grading, as well as student responsibility.
“It’s a terrible thing that people want to clog up the courts with students and their leaf projects,” he said. “The court has so much more important stuff to deal with.”
McGinley said he agrees with Withrow, the county school board’s attorney, that students need to learn responsibility.
“When they fail to meet a deadline and they start suing over leaf collections, it’s not really teaching them important life lessons,” McGinley said.
Maybe it’s teaching them the important life lesson that every disappointment in life is grounds for a lawsuit.
7 Comments
If you get an exception for a due date that everyone else has to abide by, you enjoy an advantage over them. Why don’t this girl’s classmates sue for not getting the same leniency she did?
Being a high achiever means accepting responsibility for both the obligations you have taken on, AND those that are mandatory.
Sometimes I think the US should have a loser-pay system.
The parent of a Sissonville High School student is suing a teacher and the school board over a failing grade the student received on a leaf project in her advanced biology class. … The leaf project was the most significant assignment of the semester, worth more points than the final exam.
Far be it from me to encourage another frivolous lawsuit, but it appears to me that they would have a much better case if they sued for “educational malpractice”. What in the world was the teaching thinking when she assigned a leaf project in an advanced biology course? Isn’t that something that you do in the third grade?
The plaintiff has a right to be out of school on approved school activities, such as student council, without being punished by a teacher who intentionally manipulated the grading system and used the grade as a form of punishment to make sure that the minor plaintiff’s 4.5 GPA was destroyed,” the lawsuit says.
Destroyed, I don’t think so. Assuming that she is a senior, a quick calculation shows that a grade of B would lower her GPA to around 4.42. In fact, an A would also lower her GPA to 4.47. In other words there were no damages.
I tried to get a lawyers to file a lawsuit over a C grade in college. Not one lawyer would even talk to me. I refused to pay the college as long as they protected there teacher. The college was in WV just like this comments story is in WV but she’s in high school. Rick in WV
“I refused to pay the college as long as they protected there teacher. ”
Judging from the poor grammar I suspect the grade was well deserved.
While a lawsuit has likely gone too far, this does highlight a problem my own children have face in school; conflicting schedules and situations where the student is put in a no-win situation.
(I do wonder, though, how a student with a 4.5 GPA could be so stupid as to not turn the assignment in the day before! Or to have at least talked to the teacher before hand. In my experience, most teachers are willing to extend deadlines or make other arrangements in these cases.)
A similar claim got a settlement of 5 figures, likely lower than the potential defense cost for the school. However, discovery resulted in a retraction of admission to Harvard. Her student work got parsed all too well by word by word parsing trained lawyers.
Now, I don’t believe Harvard admission ain’t worth nothin’. But, I bet 2 bits the plaintiff would prefer to return the settlement to get her Harvard admsission back.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=348685
Discovery is sometimes more punitive, with greater deterrence than loser pays.
arerea:
You said: If you get an exception for a due date that everyone else has to abide by, you enjoy an advantage over them. Why don’t this girl’s classmates sue for not getting the same leniency she did?
Did you read the article? This girl was not given any leniency, although she WOULD have if she had missed school b/c of sports or disciplinary action.
The crux of her argument is that the school gives this exception to some students, but not to all.
And personally, if you ask me, student counsel is a much more worthy reason then “disciplinary suspension” to have an extension.