Damages
Awarded to benefit plaintiff and to compensate injured persons for their actual losses, i.e. medical expenses, lost salary, and other provable costs incurred as a result of the defendant's actions.
What is compensatory damages?
A plaintiff cannot recover damages if the plaintiff's own negligence was in any way a cause of the injury.
What is contributory negligence?
A California school board was not found liable of educational malpractice in the case of a high school graduate who could only read at a fifth-grade level.
What is Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified School District (1976).?
A jury found a New York school negligent in the suit of a student's injury caused by a fellow student, who had a history of aggressive targeting behavior towards the plaintiff, when she pulled a chair out from beneath her in the cafeteria.
What is Wilson v. Vestal Central School District (2006).?
Awarded to plaintiff in order to punish the defendants for their wrongful actions and to defer similar actions in the future. Awarded when defendant shows malice, fraud, or reckless disregard for injured person's safety or constitutional rights.
What is punitive damages?
When negligence can be found by both the plaintiff and the defendant and compared to calculate awarded damages.
What is comparative negligence?
A New York court ruled in favor of the school, when a parent sued the school after two students hit heads during a basketball game. Stating even if there was an absence of supervision and even if "such absence continued negligence, still under the circumstances, such lack of supervision was not the proximate cause of the accident".
What is Kaufman v. City of New York (1961).?
Under the common-law theory that employers can be liable when they are negligent in hiring or retaining employees whom they know or should have known are unfit and who put others at unreasonable risk of harm, a school board and superintendent were found negligent in the retention of a teacher who sexually abused a student in 1976.
What is School Board of Orange County v. Coffey (1988).?
What is nominal damages?
A common-law theory which holds that since the state and its agencies are sovereign, they cannot be sued without their consent and should not be held liable for the negligence of their employees.
What is governmental immunity or sovereign immunity?
A 12-year-old boy's parents, who was beaten by several boys unrelated to the school at a museum during a school field trip, sued, stating that the teachers who organized the trip were negligent in not supervising their students and in failing to foresee and guard against the boy's injury.
20 eighth-grade girls were brought to the athletic field, where eighth-grade boys were playing baseball, and left by their teacher. After the teacher left, the boys began throwing pebbles at the girls, were asked to stopped by the girls, and persisted until one girl's eye was injured by a pebble that was thrown.
What is Sheehan v. St. Peter's Catholic School (1971).?
A federal statute that may be imposed upon a state for the actions of third parties who deprive individuals of life, liberty, or property only when the state has a special relationship with that individual. It does not provide civil rights, only enforces those that already exist.
What is Section 1983?
In 2009, this state enacted a teacher immunity law (H.B. 1462) which protects teachers from lawsuits arising over classroom discipline.
What is Indiana?
After a 12-year-old student was fatally injured in a dangerous skateboarding game while playing at an elementary school around 5:30 P.M., the parents sued the school district for negligent supervision and for maintaining grounds that were not locked.
What is Bartell v. Palos Verdes Peninsula School District (1978).?
A school board was found liable when a six-year-old was injured sliding down a tether ball pole by a screw protruding approximately 1.5 inches. During this incident, one teacher was required to supervise 160-180 children, school bus unloading, patrolling the playground, and students in the school basement. Because of these assigned duties, the school board was found negligent of reasonable care.
What is Gibbons v. Orleans Parish School Board (1980).?
A provision of the 2002 NCLB Act of 2001 that provides a wide range of teacher protections and immunity for teachers who were "acting within the scope of the teacher's employment or responsibilities to a school".
What is the Paul D. Coverdell Teacher Protection Act?
A student was struck in the eye with a stick by another student while waiting for the bus, resulting in partial blindness. Although the school was negligent in providing supervision of students waiting for the school bus, because the plaintiff could not prove that careful supervision would have prevented the injury the school was not found liable for the injury.
What is Nash v. Rapides Parish School Board (1966).?
Under their duty of care, two high school counselors were held liable for failing to attempt to prevent a student's suicide. The counselors knew about the intent, confronted the student and when convinced otherwise, did nothing further, including failing to inform the father.
What is Eisel v. Board of Education (2009).?