Money Damages Help for Texas Bullying Victims
The Lento Law Firm's Education Law Team is available to help your Texas grade school student pursue civil litigation for monetary damages for bullying harm that your student has suffered. Bullying can have a staggering impact on students. That's why Texas and other states have prohibited bullying, requiring schools to take specific effective steps to prevent and redress bullying. Our attorneys are committed to helping you invoke the Texas anti-bullying laws and laws for recovery of money damages.
Do not rely on an unqualified local criminal defense or trial attorney who is unfamiliar with the complex laws and procedures your student must follow for a financial recovery against the school and its officials. Instead, retain our premier Education Law Team to assist you with pursuing monetary damages to compensate your student for bullying harm. We can help your student make the best of a bad bullying situation. Retain us for your student's best possible outcome.
Bullying Is a Problem Everywhere
School nurses know what happens to school students. According to the National Association of School Nurses, bullying is a persistent national problem. Lawmakers and policymakers across the country agree, based on the legislation in nearly every state prohibiting bullying. Studies prove how bullied students withdraw from studies, according to the Centers for Disease Control, causing higher school dismissal and dropout rates. Bullying also causes mental and emotional harm, including depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, and physical effects. Bullying can also threaten a student's life. The National Library of Medicine offers a study closely associating school bullying with student suicide. Bullying negatively affects student health, social development, and academic growth. Know how bullying may be affecting your Texas grade school student.
Money Damages in Bullying Cases
Bullying is also sufficiently harmful that school districts across the country, including Texas school districts, have had to pay substantial settlements, verdicts, awards, and judgments to students victimized in bullying incidents. Parents have successfully pursued lawsuits against both public schools and private schools, not just for student injuries but also for student suicide deaths from school bullying. Monetary settlements and awards for bullying victims have been in the tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and into seven figures, the latter most often for wrongful deaths. The successful cases prove that skilled and experienced representation can make a difference. Let our premier Education Law Team help your Texas grade school student pursue a bullying claim for monetary damages.
Bullying in Texas Grade Schools
Just as bullying happens everywhere else, it also happens in Texas. According to one study, Texas ranks twenty-seventh among the fifty U.S. states on its bullying problem. While that ranking may be in the better half of states, it is barely in the better half. A bullying research center finds that a staggering 71% of Texas students ages twelve to seventeen report having been bullied. Nearly half of Texas students between those ages report having been bullied in the past month. Cyberbullying among the same population occurs at about one-half of those rates, but still at a very high percentage. Bullying is a Texas-size problem in Texas. Our attorneys are available across Texas to help grade school students pursue monetary damages for bullying harm.
Texas Anti-Bullying Law
The Texas legislature has responded to serious bullying issues in Texas grade schools with an anti-bullying law that requires every school district to adopt a policy prohibiting bullying. The policy must also offer a procedure for complaining about bullying, commit the school to investigate complaints, and provide a procedure for determining complaints and punishing wrongdoers. The policy must also protect the victim from retaliation for the complaint. Schools may also not punish the victim for acts of self-defense against the bullying and must provide counseling and other support for the bullying victim. Another section of the Texas anti-bullying law permits the bullied student's parent or guardian to request that the school transfer the student out of the school, class, or program in which the bullying occurred and requires the school to honor the request. Another section provides for the discipline, including suspension or expulsion, of students committing especially severe acts of bullying. The Texas anti-bullying laws are sufficiently comprehensive and strict to provide your student with meaningful relief and remedies.
The Texas Bullying Definition
The Texas anti-bullying law defines bullying broadly to reach the conduct that most students and parents would consider to be disruptive of the victim's education. Under the Texas anti-bullying law, bullying includes:
“a single significant act or a pattern of acts by one or more students directed at another student that exploits an imbalance of power and involves engaging in written or verbal expression, expression through electronic means, or physical conduct….”
To constitute bullying under the Texas law, the conduct must also meet at least one of these other conditions:
- Physically harm a student, damage student property, or place a student in reasonable fear of harm or damage;
- be sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive to create an intimidating, threatening, or abusive educational environment;
- materially and substantially disrupt education or the school's orderly operation or
- infringe on the victim's school rights.
The Texas Bullying Definition Does Not Include Discrimination
Many states define bullying to include conduct directed at the student victim's characteristics protected by state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Bullies often use race, color, national origin, religion, sex, and disability, among other protected characteristics, to further their intimidating and harassing conduct. Texas does not join those states. The Texas anti-bullying statute does not invoke the victim's race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or other protected characteristics. A student wrongdoer need not pick on the victim's protected characteristics to support a Texas bullying charge.
The Texas Bullying Definition Includes Cyberbullying
Texas, on the other hand, is among the many states expressly prohibiting cyberbullying. Cyberbullying typically involves text messages, emails, social media posts, and similar uses of computers, cellphones, or other electronic devices to carry out the bullying. The Texas anti-bullying law defines cyberbullying to include:
“bullying that is done through the use of any electronic communication device, including through the use of a cellular or other type of telephone, a computer, a camera, electronic mail, instant messaging, text messaging, a social media application, an Internet website, or any other Internet-based communication tool.”
Cyberbullying under the Texas anti-bullying law includes conduct occurring on school property, conduct resulting in a message delivered to school property or to a school-sponsored or school-related activity off school property, conduct off school property at a school event, and conduct on a school bus or other vehicle transporting students to school or a school activity, if interfering with the activity or disrupting operations.
Texas Civil Liability Compensating Bullying Victims
The Texas anti-bullying law makes no direct mention of a civil claim for money damages arising from bullying harm. A related Texas statute provides that the subchapter of which the anti-bullying laws are a part neither expands nor limits civil liability. A related Texas statute grants immunity to the school and school officials for acts taken related to school security, but that law does not clearly extend immunity to the school or school officials for negligently or recklessly failing to prevent and correct bullying. Texas cases included in a nationwide summary of settlements and judgments all relied on federal law recovery theories, discussed below. But your student may have both state and federal law theories for recovery. Our attorneys are available to help you evaluate your student's Texas and federal legal rights and theories for monetary damages for bullying harm.
Texas Tort Claims Act Compensation for Bullying Claimants
States routinely claim sovereign immunity from civil lawsuits for monetary damages from the state or its political subdivisions, including school districts. But many states waive that immunity at least in part. Texas is among those many states waiving immunity in certain cases. The Texas Tort Claims Act permits lawsuits against a governmental unit for an injury that arises out of the use of a motor vehicle. The Act permits lawsuits for money damages in certain other narrow cases. The Act does not expressly authorize lawsuits against schools for failing to prevent bullying or other similar claims. The Act does not affect the immunity of public employees and officials. That is not to say that your student has no state law claim for bullying. Governmental immunity and liability may depend on the peculiar facts of your student's case. Our attorneys can help you evaluate whether your student has a right to recover monetary damages from the school for bullying harm under Texas state laws.
Texas Negligence Law and Bullying Victims
If, for some special reason or relationship, governmental immunity does not apply to your student's case, your student's theory of recovery under Texas law would likely be a negligence theory. A Texas negligence claim depends on showing that the defendant school or school official owed your student a duty of reasonable care, breached that duty by unreasonably failing or refusing to prevent and address bullying, and the failure caused your student to suffer bullying harm. Negligent breaches of the duty to reasonably monitor, supervise, investigate, warn, and protect may be your student's theory, but our attorneys will help you determine your student's specific case.
Other Texas Tort Law and Bullying Victims
Texas recognizes other tort claims along with the negligence theory. Those claims can include assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation. These claims all generally involve intentional wrongs in which school employees are unlikely to engage. If school employees do engage in intentional wrongs, they may be outside the scope of employment and thus not insured or indemnified by the school.
Texas's Parental Liability Law and Bullying Victims
On the other hand, your student may well have such intentional tort claims against the student who commits the bullying, although students are generally uncollectible. The bullying student's parents may have limited liability for the student's wrong. The Texas parental liability law holds parents liable for up to $25,000 in damages caused by their child's willful and malicious conduct.
Texas Compensation Theories for Private School Bullying
If your student attends a Texas private school and suffers bullying harm, your student may well have a money damages action available under any of the above theories, especially negligence. Texas governmental immunity laws do not protect private schools and their employees. Private schools are not governmental agencies. Your student may also have a breach of contract claim against the private school if the school promised but failed to provide security and protection against bullying.
Federal Laws Compensating for Bullying Harm
You can see from the above discussion that Texas governmental immunity raises substantial questions over whether your student could recover from a Texas public school or its officials for bullying harm. However, state governmental immunity does not generally affect claims for monetary damages that may arise under federal law. Federal law does not include a general negligence or other tort recovery. However, specific federal laws may create similar private rights of action for monetary damages. Our attorneys can help you evaluate your student's potential federal law claims under the following theories of recovery.
Section 1983 Substantive Due Process Claims
Federal law 42 USC Section 1983 creates a private right of action for monetary damages against public agencies and officials, potentially including public schools and their employees, who deprive the claimant of constitutional rights under color of state law. To act under the color of state law means to act with the state law's authority, such as a public school teacher or principal would act when disciplining, investigating, or otherwise directing and affecting student instruction. But to sustain a Section 1983 claim, your student must identify the constitutional right that the school, teacher, or other official violates. A school's failure to address known bullying may arguably constitute a violation of substantive due process and equal protection rights, especially if the school officials exhibit a deliberate indifference to known rights. Students have sought and obtained substantial monetary recoveries under such theories in extraordinary cases, especially when proving a state-created danger, Jones v. Reynolds, 438 F.3d 685, 690 (6th Cir. 2006), special duty and relationship, Soper v. Hoben, 195 F.3d 845, 852 (6th Cir. 1999), or act shocking the conscience, Range v. Douglas, 763 F.3d 573, 588 (6th Cir. 2014). Retain us to help you evaluate your Texas student's potential Section 1983 claim.
Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws and Bullying Compensation
Your student has another set of federal laws on which to rely if the bullying involves characteristics, like race, color, national origin, sex, religion, or disability, that federal anti-discrimination laws protect. Bullies and others intent on harm use those characteristics often for their demeaning and harassing conduct. That's why federal law protects those characteristics. If your student's school failed to prevent bias-based bullying, and the school's failure resulted in the violation of your student's federal anti-discrimination rights, then Section 1983 and other federal law may authorize a damages action for your student in federal court. Those federal anti-discrimination laws include the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Let us help you evaluate your student's federal anti-discrimination rights for a money damages recovery for bullying harm.
Texas Bullying Defendants
You cannot sue for damages without naming one or more defendants in the case. And the defendants you ordinarily name should be ones from whom you can collect a monetary judgment. Suing the student wrongdoer may not result in any payment if the student has no income or assets from which to collect. As shown above, the parents may have a liability of up to $25,000. But in the usual case, the defendant is the school or school district because the school or district is most responsible and most collectible. Your student may also have the option of suing individual school teachers, staff, or other officials, subject to the above questions of state law immunity. If your student does have a viable theory to sue individual school officials, you should still ask the question of whether the individual is collectible, whether the school will indemnify (pay for) the individual's wrong, and whether suing the school or individual, or both, is the better strategic approach.
Damages for Texas Bullying Victims
When your student pursues a money damages claim for bullying harm, Texas law will ordinarily compensate both economic and non-economic harm. Economic harm means out-of-pocket loss like counseling and medical expenses, replacement of damaged or stolen personal property such as jewelry, electronic devices, eyewear, clothing, books, and backpacks, and lost wages or impaired earning capacity. Texas law also permits non-economic damages for things like pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, and lost enjoyment of life, along with humiliation, embarrassment, fear, fright, and shock.
Texas law also authorizes punitive damages to punish the defendant. A punitive damage award generally requires proof of more reprehensible conduct than mere negligence, such as willful and wanton misconduct or gross negligence. Texas law caps punitive damages in a complex scheme depending on compensatory damages awards.
Pursuing a Texas Civil Action for Bullying
Our Education Law Team stands ready to help you evaluate, investigate, and pursue your student's money damages action for bullying harm. Nothing stated above guarantees your student's claim or denies that your student has a claim. You must instead consult our attorneys, sharing all relevant case facts, before we can advise you whether your student has a viable claim to pursue. When you do retain us to pursue your student's claim, we can identify and acquire admissible evidence in its support, choose the best court or tribunal for the claim, plead the best theories in a compelling complaint filed with the court or tribunal, and seek to negotiate a favorable settlement. If your case does not settle, our attorneys have the skill and experience to conduct discovery, handle pretrial motions, present your student's case at trial, enforce a monetary judgment, and defend that judgment on appeal as necessary.
Defending Disciplinary Charges Against Texas Bullying Victims
If your student's school officials do not promptly prevent and address your student's bullying harm, your student may act out in response. Do not be surprised to see your student act in unexpected ways while trying to avoid or compensate for the bullying harm. Your student may fight the bully in self-defense, skip school or class to avoid the bully, disrupt class, or disrespect teachers out of avoidance and compensating behaviors. Your student's school may then pursue disciplinary charges against your student instead of recognizing the effects of bullying. In that case, our attorneys stand ready to defend your bullied student against those disciplinary charges while we also present your student's case for monetary damages for the bullying harm.
Avoiding Texas School Bullying
Your student has a few things your student needs to do to stay out of trouble while preserving and promoting your student's money damages claim for bullying harm. The first thing is not to join the bully. Make sure your student knows not to let the bully use bullying to recruit your student to the bullying cause. Your student also needs to immediately tell teachers and tell you of any bullying incidents. You can then act on your student's behalf to ensure the school promptly investigates while protecting your student. If your student worries about retaliation from the bully or teachers or other students, then tell your student that the school has the statutory duty under Texas law to protect your student against that retaliation. Retaliation will add more claims to your student's case for a monetary recovery.
Representation for Texas Bullying Victims
You can do no better than to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team to represent your Texas grade school student in your student's civil action for monetary damages for bullying harm. Our attorneys have helped hundreds of students nationwide successfully address bullying and other school conduct issues. Call 888.535.3686 now or chat with us for the skilled services and experienced representation your Texas student needs.
