Michael Gunn admits that he’s guilty of plagiarism, but he’s suing the University of Kent at Canterbury because, he says, they should have caught him sooner and warned him before they did catch him on the eve of graduation. (BBC, May 27) (via Jacobs).
Posts Tagged ‘schools’
Watch it, Teach, I know my rights
In a new poll of educators conducted by Public Agenda and commissioned by Common Good, “Nearly 8 in 10 teachers (78%) said students are quick to remind them that they have rights or that their parents can sue.” (Fredreka Schouten, “Study: Pupils pay academic price for unruly classrooms”, Gannett/USA Today, May 11)(more at Common Good: poll, May 11 forum co-sponsored with AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, “EdWatch”). More: Tresa Baldas, “The Anaconda in the Chandelier”, National Law Journal, May 19.
U.K.: “Teachers want to sue children for false accusations”
Fixing the adversarial classroom, or just escalating its madness? “Children and parents who maliciously wreck teachers’ careers by false accusations should be forced to pay compensation, the second biggest teachers’ union [in Britain] said yesterday.” The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers “voted to seek a change in the law to allow children to be sued for compensation and forced to pay the money out of future earnings.” (Liz Lightfoot, Daily Telegraph, Apr. 15). “Only 69 of the 1,782 allegations of abuse made by children against NASUWT members in the past 10 years have led to convictions. In 1,378 cases no action was taken at all, the union says.” (Lucy Ward, “Teachers call for right to sue false accusers”, Guardian, Apr. 15).
Lawyer: school should have secured bus windows against opening
In Indianapolis, Raul Gonzalez IV, 16 and developmentally disabled, “died after he stuck his head out of a [school] bus window and struck a tree last fall. The bus driver was steering to avoid an injured raccoon”. Now his mother, Irma Garcia, has filed a tort claim notice against the city and Perry Township schools on a variety of negligence theories. Her lawyer, Robert York, said in particular that the fatality could have been averted “if the bus’s windows had been blocked from opening more than a few inches”. The article makes no mention of what such a recommendation might mean for the safety of school bus passengers in other situations, such as emergency evacuations. (Vic Ryckaert, “Perry Schools may be sued in bus accident”, Indianapolis Star, Apr. 16)(& letter to the editor, Jun. 22).
Student sues over C grade
Fresno, Calif.: Brandy Hurd, “a straight-A eighth-grader and a top athlete in her class, is suing a teacher and the Island Union Elementary School District in Lemoore for what a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fresno says was an unfair C in physical education last year. … In addition to asking a judge to order the grade changed, the lawsuit also is seeking unspecified financial damages.” The girl’s father, Ivan Hurd, “is not new to the federal court system in Fresno,” having last year obtained a settlement estimated at $700,000 in a seven-year-old dispute over false arrest and other claims. (Jerry Bier, “Lemoore student sues over C grade”, Fresno Bee, Apr. 16).
School-potluck menace averted
Since last year the Board of Health of the town of Andover, Mass., has required school parent-teacher organizations “to have a specially trained ‘certified food protection manager’ if they plan to serve food at a school fund-raiser or class party.” The training sessions needed to become a certified manager cost $145. Potluck suppers are entirely forbidden since it is impossible to monitor the cooking of food in homes. “The rules were even stricter when the policy was first implemented. PTOs and parents were required to have a trained food safety expert at every event involving food, including classroom birthday parties where cupcakes would be served.” Now the town is drawing up a list of foods that it does not consider to pose a big safety problem, a list that surprisingly turns out to include coffee and doughnuts (hasn’t anyone warned them about hot-coffee spills and obesity-as-tort?) “Even though we have a long history of no problems, society is getting more litigious, and many of the PTOs are looking at getting insurance,” said Mary Jo Gustus, who heads the parent-teacher organization at South Elementary School. (Meredith Warren, “Parents train as food police for school spaghetti suppers”, Lawrence Eagle Tribune, Mar. 17). For another food menace averted, see Dec. 13, 1999. More: Feb. 17, 2005 (Indiana).
Teacher’s relationship with 15-yo not grounds for firing
Australia is in an uproar after a New South Wales teacher, Jeff Sinclair, won a A$28,000 payout for “psychological injury” for being fired for starting a relationship with a 15-year-old student a third of his age. The Department of Education has been ordered to pay him an additional A$317 a week until he finds “suitable” employment. The government is appealing. (Bruce McDougall, “Teacher’s cash over student love”, news.com.au, Apr. 5; Miranda Devine, “The teacher who played victim”, Sydney Morning Herald, Apr. 8) (via Jacobs). Update Jun. 3: jilted wife wants damage from school authority too.
Lawsuit: school failed to supervise gang initiation
On March 28, 2002, 14-year-old Francisco Belman asked to join the “Latin Mafia” gang at H.E. McCracken Middle School in Bluffton, South Carolina, an initiation that required him to be punched several times in the chest. Midway through the school bathroom ceremony, however, he collapsed and went into convulsions; the gang members tried for a few minutes to revive him with “sink water and paper towels.” School officials were eventually summoned, and gave Francisco CPR while waiting for paramedics; paramedics defibrillated, but Belman’s heart stopped again on the way to the hospital; Belman went into a vegetative state and died ten weeks later. So the parents have sued “the South Carolina Board of Education, Beaufort County Board of Education, town of Bluffton, Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and the parents of the two boys who pleaded guilty this month to involuntary manslaughter in Francisco’s death.” Especially appalling is the newspaper’s editorial defending the lawsuit against peripheral players as an appropriate mechanism for the parents’ grief, but lapses into self-parody:
Clearly, the Belman family wants and deserves an apology. But from whom? The two boys who were trying to initiate Francisco into their club that fateful day have expressed remorse, and how could they not? They are teenagers; they didn’t know their machismo would ultimately kill Francisco.
(Stephanie Ingersoll, “Lawsuit filed in boy’s beating death”, Carolina Morning News, Mar. 26; “Editorial: Don’t judge Belman family for filing lawsuit”, Carolina Morning News, Mar. 26; “Chronology of a tragic day”, Carolina Morning News, Mar. 26; Noah Haglund, “Trial to begin in McCracken student’s death”, Hilton Head Island Packet, Mar. 14).
$1.5 M for yelling at player to get in shape
In New Jersey, the state that litigates valedictorian decisions (Jun. 30), Jennifer Besler blamed her high school basketball coach’s request for her to lose ten pounds for an eating disorder that has lasted over eight years. A Mercer County jury found her damages to be $3 million, and held the school district responsible for 49% of them–with possible punitive damages still to be calculated. “The jury also awarded Philip Besler, Jennifer’s father, $100,000 because then school board President Lester Bynum gaveled him into silence as he tried to speak at a January 1997 school board meeting.” The defense lawyer has noted that the Besler family’s complaints about the coach began when Jennifer lost her starting position on the team. The school district will appeal, but meanwhile has already shelled out for a four-month trial. (Linda Stein, “$1.5M coach-suit verdict”, Trenton Times, Mar. 25; Lisa Meyer, “Jurors get Hussong case today”, Trentonian, Mar. 16; Lisa Meyer, “Lawyers argue over jury instructions”, Trentonian, Mar. 2). Maybe the former coach can get a job counseling the plaintiffs who blame McDonald’s for their obesity.
Update: Jury declines to award punitive damages; Mr. Besler reveals that he spent $1 million on case (thus showing who the real bully is). (Mark Perkiss, “Coach vows to fight verdict”, Trenton Times, Mar. 26; Lisa Meyer, “Beslers speak after decision”, Trentonian, Mar. 26).
Update: Judge throws out $1.5 M verdict (Apr. 9).
Shhhh! He’s got a lawyer!
In 1996 Frank Sulloway had a publishing hit with Born To Rebel, a book arguing that birth order is an important influence on individuals’ destinies (supposedly, first-born children grow up conservative, later-borns want to rock the boat). There were doubters, however, and a critique has now appeared claiming that Sulloway’s data does not back up his conclusions. According to a summary of the situation by Alex Tabarrok (Mar. 20), the appearance of this critique in print was drastically delayed by Sulloway’s threats to sue the journal’s publisher and editor over defamation and other alleged wrongs. The journal’s publisher declined to publish even a debate on the book unless assured that it would not be sued, with the result that editor Gary Johnson and his association wound up publishing it independently, after nearly five years of delay. Tabarrok has much more detail about the story, which he finds “shocking” and “disturbing”.
Lawyers for author John Gray (Men are From Mars…) threatened a libel suit after a weblog said rude things about his on-first-glance-impressive educational credentials. That ensured more attention to the embarrassment, as Instapundit (Mar. 22) points out in a post with many links. (Plus: J.B. Howard Jr. has more on the case, Mar. 25). And the Michigan Court of Appeals has “dismissed a lawsuit in which the Michigan Education Association claimed the Mackinac Center, a free market think tank that has been at odds with the union on issues such as charter schools and education vouchers, had violated the privacy of MEA President Luigi Battaglieri by quoting him in a fund-raising letter. The court concluded that the letter ‘falls squarely within the protection of the First Amendment for discourse on matters of public interest.'” (Jacob Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”, Mar. 22)(Mackinac Center, Mar. 19) More: John E. Kramer, “Calling the Bully’s Bluff”, Liberty and Law (Institute for Justice), Jun. (more on media and free speech suits)