School bullies will take notice if their peers are convicted in criminal court.
Phoebe Prince, the first-year student at West Hadley High School in Massachusetts committed suicide after relentless bullying. This story has been covered by media around the country for the past several weeks.
This truly is a tragedy that has the ingredients to fashion a major advance in student rights.
Elizabeth D. Scheible, a district attorney in Massachusetts is taking on Phoebe’s bullies through the criminal justice system. At least nine teenagers identified in the bullying tragedy are facing criminal charges, including criminal harassment which carries with it a two and one-half-year jail sentence a fine, or both.
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Liability with respect to schools and school employees is generally based on the legal theory of negligence. Negligence has been defined as: the omission to do something which a reasonable person would do or the doing of something which a prudent and reasonable person would not do; the failure to exercise ordinary care under the circumstances; conduct that a reasonably prudent person should realize involves an unreasonable risk of causing invasion of another’s interest; or, a failure to do an act that is necessary for the protection or assistance of another.
For a plaintiff to prove negligence, generally, four elements must be proven: Read more…
Many of the cases for which I provide consultation to attorneys (both plaintiff and defense) involve the question of whether the school, through its employees, provided appropriate supervision to students when someone was injured or even killed.
In defense of the school, it should be noted that lack of supervision or inadequate supervision may not necessarily create liability; it must be shown that the lack of supervision is the proximate cause of the injury. Further, for the plaintiff to recover there must be a duty to supervise the plaintiff on the part of the school. Read more…
