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Court of Appeal:
School District Must Pay $1 Million Over Bullying of Pupil
Justices Say Principal, Teachers Had Duty to Student to Stop Harassment of Her by Classmates
By a MetNews Staff Writer
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Plaintiff Eleri Irons, then 18, is seen in a 2022 photo flanked by attorneys Christa Ramey, left, and co-counsel Siannah Collado, outside the Van Nuys Courthouse after a jury assessed damages at $1 million against the El Segundo Unified School District based on a failure to cause three classmates to stop harassing and bullying Irons. The Court of Appeal on Friday affirmed the judgment. |
Div. Eight of the Court of Appeal for this district has upheld a $1 million judgment against the El Segundo Unified School District, in Los Angeles County’s South Bay area, in favor of a woman who, while a student at a middle school in 2017-18, was the victim of bullying by classmates with teachers and administrators failing to protect her.
Defenses of a lack of duty to the student and discretionary immunity were rejected.
“[T]he District has waived or failed to develop many of” the “ issues in their opening brief, and the remaining issues lack merit,” Justice Victor Viramontes said in Friday’s opinion.
Although the plaintiff, Eleri Irons, was identified by her actual name in Los Angeles Superior Court pleadings and Court of Appeal briefs, as well as in a press release issued by her trial lawyer, and in news reports in the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Breeze, the New York Post and elsewhere, and on NBC and in social media, Viramontes opted to refer to her as “E.I.”
A jury in the courtroom of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael B. Harwin on Sept. 19, 2022, awarded Irons $700,000 in past noneconomic damages and $300,000 in future noneconomic damages. Harwin subsequently denied defense motions for a new trial or judgment notwithstanding the verdict.
Allegations of Complaint
The amended complaint, filed on June 26, 2019, by attorneys John F. Ramey, Christa H. Ramey and Schyler S. Katz of Ramey Law, PC, alleges:
“In or around November 2017 through June 14, 2018, Plaintiff, a minor student, was attending El Segundo Middle School when she was bullied by classmates through a series of aggressive, hate text messages, and messages through social media.”
The pleading tells of the student’s father, Christopher Irons (himself a middle-school science teacher), bringing his concerns to the attention of the school’s principal, and further efforts to prod action causing the teenage aggressors to cease victimizing Eleri Irons, the pleading sets forth:
“Meanwhile, the bullying continued, and Plaintiffs classmates began telling Plaintiff that no one liked her and would give Plaintiff the middle finger every time they walked past Plaintiff. Thereafter, on or about June 13, 2018, a written petition to end Plaintiffs life was created by Plaintiffs classmates and was being circulated around El Segundo Middle School.”
The complaint asserts that the defendants “owed an affirmative duty of care to the students of El Segundo Middle School, including Plaintiff, to take reasonable steps to maintain supervision during school hours, to maintain discipline, and to protect students against harm from aggressive, reckless, or intentional misconduct by other students.”
Causes of Action
The complaint contains two causes of action, the first alleging negligence and the second averring negligence in hiring, supervising or training of school personnel. During trial, Irons dropped the second cause of action—prompting the school district to protest on appeal that the plaintiff improperly argued to the jury the merits of allegations of a claim that no longer existed while Irons countered that the dismissal was occasioned by a realization that the first cause of action embraced all varieties of negligence.
The district argued that certain Education Code sections alluded to at trial relating to the discipline of misbehaving students impose no mandatory duty on a school district to prevent harm by those students and that discretionary immunity applies. Its brief, by Linda Bauermeister and Robert Kostrenich of the Orange County firm of Barber & Bauermeister says:
“A statute is deemed to impose a mandatory duty on a public official only if the statute affirmatively imposes the duty and provides implementing guidelines….
“The proper statutory interpretation is that the DISTRICT and its employees have discretion under the Education Code as to which methods of corrective behavior they elect to implement.”
The brief also contends:
“No statute imposes direct liability on a public entity for its generic negligence in regard to hiring, supervision or training of its employees.”
Viramontes’s Response
Viramontes noted that Irons “did not sue” under the Education Code provisions that the school district was proclaiming to be inapposite nor did she cite them at trial and Harwin did not instruct under them, although an expert witness did happen to make mention of them.
He pointed to the “special relationship” that a school district has with its students, explaining that it is “a relationship arising from the mandatory character of school attendance and the comprehensive control over students exercised by school personnel,” creating a duty of care. The justice wrote:
“[S]chool officials owe a duty to students to supervise their conduct and protect them from harm while on school grounds….The District’s contention that the Middle School employees had no duty to protect E.I. from harm caused by other students is, therefore, meritless.”
Discretionary Immunity
The district insisted on appeal that it “and its employees have complete discretionary immunity.”
It relied on Government Code §820.2 which says:
Except as otherwise provided by statute, a public employee is not liable for an injury resulting from his act or omission where the act or omission was the result of the exercise of the discretion vested in him, whether or not such discretion be abused.”
That section is inapplicable, Viramontes declared, reciting that such immunity applies only to high-level decisionmaking, not to low-level implementations of dictated policy.
“E.I. did not claim that the District or the Middle School was negligent in crafting its anti-bullying policies,” he wrote. “Rather, E.I. claimed that the Middle School employees negligently failed to protect her from other students’ bullying by, among other things, not following the District’s and the Middle School’s safety policies that were already in place.”
Three Aggressors
The three students who victimized Irons were two female students, with whom she previously had cordial relationships, and her former boyfriend. The school district said in its opening brief that “the precipitating event of the friendship breakdown was a disagreement about a male student (i.e., ‘over a boy’).”
The brief elaborates that discord developed “[b]ecause the young ladies each claimed to have been ‘hurt’ and each blamed the other.”
Spiteful actions against Irons were apparently later fueled by her speaking out, in pubic fora, against the bullying of her.
Christa H. Ramey, her primary trial attorney and one of her attorneys on appeal, commented late Friday:
“I spoke to Miss Irons earlier today and she is thrilled with the result, obviously. All she wanted to do is to be heard when she was at school in El Segundo. Today the Court of Appeal heard her.
“And she also now knows that going through this trial and experience means that other young girls will have a voice.”
The case is E.I. v. El Segundo Unified School District, 2025 S.O.S. 1653.
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