As reported by the DeKalb County Times-Journal, the mother of a 13 year-old student has filed a personal injury lawsuit due to an alleged paddling that the child received at school.
Named in the suit are individuals in the DeKalb County Board of Education, as well as superintendent C.W., principal R.B. and teacher S.M.
The counts in the suit include: the violation of the student's 14th Amendment rights to due process, negligent training and supervision of a school system employee, wantonness and assault and battery (by S.M.).
The child's mother, M.L, filed the suit, seeking "compensatory and punitive damages to be determined by a jury", on July 20 in U.S. District Court.
The paddling allegedly occurred on October 6, 2010, when the child was a student in S.M.'s classroom at Plainview.
Due to some of S.M.'s students scoring low on a particular exam, he allegedly rounded them up and ordered them into the hallway.
M.L.'s son was one of the students.
S.M. told the child that he was going to paddle him in the same way that his own father had paddled him (S.M.) for failing to do well on tests.
The suit states that "(S.M.) never provided (the victim) with any alternatives to paddling or afforded (the victim) the opportunity to have a hearing before the imposition of the paddling."
One of the students in the group, a female, allegedly broke down in tears and was allowed to return to the classroom prior to any disciplinary action.
The weapon, described in the suit as a wooden paddle with two holes drilled through it, was then used to "beat (the victim) so severely that it caused bruising that was visible for approximately two weeks."
After the alleged beating the child was then "hugged" in an "inappropriate manner" by S.M.
The suit continued by stating that the child "suffered such severe physical and mental trauma based on...(S.M.) beating him that (the victim) had to undergo psychological counseling in an attempt to overcome the effects of the beating. The force of a 350-pound man using a weapon such as a wooden paddle against a child less than half his weight presented a reasonably foreseeable risk of serious bodily injury to the child. (The victim) did not present any disruptive behavior that would warrant corporal punishment."
The suit, in naming individual staff members at the school and in the DeKalb County Board of Education, alleged that they each "had notice that (S.M.) , in his capacity as an employee, regularly engaged in courses of conduct that posed a pervasive and unreasonable deprivation of the procedural and substantive due process rights of the students under his control..."
Lead attorney for the plaintiff, Gregory F. Yaghmai, said, "Our position is that they have tried to portray this under the guise of corporal punishment when in fact it was a beating. This has been a very long standing problem at this school, and we hope to get justice not just for (the victim) but for other students and prevent this sort of thing from happening again in the future."
Has an adult subjected your child to physical or emotional abuse? You may have ground for a lawsuit. Contact a personal injury lawyer today to discuss your situation.