Civil Money Damages for Florida Bullying Victims
The Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team wants to help your Florida grade school student recover monetary damages for the bullying harm your student suffered. If your student faced grade school bullying that school officials failed to promptly prevent, address, and correct, then your student may have a right to recover money damages in a civil action under Florida or federal law. Our attorneys have the special knowledge, substantial skills, and relevant experience to evaluate your student's claim for monetary damages for bullying harm. School liability claims are complex and technical, not for ordinary attorneys lacking the necessary special experience. Our premier Education Law Team stands ready to assist your Florida grade school student with pursuing monetary damages for bullying harm. Help your student make the best of a bad situation. Retain us for help evaluating, filing, and pursuing your student's money damages recovery in Florida for bullying harm.
Bullying Is a Persistent and Serious National Problem
Nearly everyone agrees that grade school bullying is a big and long-standing national issue based on the anti-bullying legislation that policymakers have championed and lawmakers have enacted across the country. The experts on student health and welfare at the National Association of School Nurses confirm that bullying is a persistent national problem. Bullied students withdraw from school studies, suffering dismal school dismissal and dropout rates, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Bullying triggers mental and emotional distress, leading to serious mental health issues like depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, and even student suicide, according to a National Library of Medicine report. Don't let bullying adversely affect your student's academic improvement, mental health, and social development. Let us help your Florida grade school student stop and recover from bullying harm.
Money Damages in Bullying Cases
Your student's prospect of recovering monetary damages for bullying harm is real, not imagined. Schools around the nation, including Florida schools, have had to pay substantial, five-figure, six-figure, and seven-figure settlements, verdicts, awards, and judgments to students suffering bullying harm. Lawsuits against both public schools and private schools have also succeeded in student suicide deaths following severe school bullying. Understand, though, that successful cases require skilled and experienced representation, not unqualified representation from ordinary criminal defense counsel or trial attorneys. Our premier Education Law Team has the special skills and substantial experience to help your Florida grade school student pursue a bullying claim for monetary damages in civil court or the appropriate administrative tribunal.
Bullying in Florida Grade Schools
Bullying isn't just a national problem. Bullying is also a problem in Florida, although the state's anti-bullying efforts have resulted in generally improved conditions. Florida ranks thirty-first among the fifty U.S. states on one study's estimate of state-by-state bullying problems. One survey conducted across the nation found that sixty-five percent, or nearly two-thirds, of Florida grade school students between the ages of twelve and seventeen report having suffered school bullying. More than half of students those ages report having suffered bullying in their Florida grade school within the past thirty days. And thirty-eight percent of those students report having been the victim of cyberbullying. Bullying is a big problem for Florida grade school students, just as bullying is a big problem for students elsewhere. Let us help your student evaluate and pursue a money damages recovery for bullying harm.
Florida's Anti-Bullying Law
The Florida legislature enacted the Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up For Students Act expressly prohibiting bullying of students in Florida's kindergarten through twelfth-grade public education. The Act prohibits bullying not only during school and at school but also “during any education program or activity,” “any school-related or school-sponsored program or activity,” and “on a school bus of a public K-12 educational institution.” The Act further requires Florida public grade schools to adopt and enforce an anti-bullying policy meeting the state's requirements. The policy must provide for support of bullying victims, immediate notice of the parents of a bullying victim, prompt investigation of complaints, and discipline of wrongdoing students. Florida anti-bullying laws are strict and comprehensive. With our help, they should provide your student with meaningful relief and remedies.
Florida's Bullying Definition
Florida's anti-bullying law defines bullying simply and broadly to mean “systematically and chronically inflicting physical hurt or psychological distress on one or more students.” Florida's anti-bullying law then promptly gives this non-exclusive list of bullying examples:
- teasing;
- social exclusion;
- threat;
- intimidation;
- stalking;
- physical violence;
- theft;
- sexual, religious, or racial harassment;
- public or private humiliation, and
- destruction of property.
Florida's Bullying Definition Includes Limited Discrimination Prohibitions
Many states define bullying to include conduct demeaning or ridiculing the victim's characteristics protected by state and federal anti-discrimination laws. Those characteristics may include race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, and other attributes and statuses. Florida's anti-bullying law, by contrast, only mentions “sexual, religious, or racial harassment” as an example of prohibited bullying. Bullying based on disability and other protected characteristics would nonetheless fall within the broad definition and the spirit of the other non-exclusive examples of bullying.
Florida's Bullying Definition Includes Cyberbullying
Florida's bullying definition, like definitions in many other states, includes an express prohibition on cyberbullying. Florida's anti-bullying statute defines bullying to include inflicting physical hurt or psychological distress “through the use of data or computer software” on a school computer. But cyberbullying also includes hurt or distress using a personal device “if the bullying substantially interferes with or limits” the victim's educational opportunities or “substantially disrupts” the school. The Florida anti-bullying law expands the electronic transmission aspect of cyberbullying to include “any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic system, photoelectronic system, or photo-optical system, including, but not limited to, electronic mail, Internet communications, instant messages, or facsimile communications.” Even creating a web page or posting content or messages impersonating another person can qualify. Florida has a very broad definition of cyberbullying.
Florida Civil Liability Compensating Bullying Victims
The Florida anti-bullying law does not expressly authorize a private right of action for monetary damages from a school or official who fails to comply with the law to prevent and address bullying. You must look to other Florida laws for your student's potential right of action, although the Florida anti-bullying law reinforces that schools and their officials owe students duties to prevent bullying. The Florida money damages bullying cases resulting in settlements and judgments, reflected in a national summary of those results, relied on both Florida tort law and federal anti-discrimination law. Let us help you evaluate your student's rights to recover under any of those laws for monetary damages for bullying harm.
Florida Tort Claims Act Compensation for Bullying Claimants
States generally claim sovereign immunity against personal injury lawsuits. But many states waive that immunity to some extent. Florida is among the few states to make a broad waiver of immunity. The Florida Tort Claims Act allows claimants to hold state and local government agencies, including public schools, liable for tort claims just as a private person or corporation would be liable. You may sue your student's public school to hold it liable for bullying harm if your student has a Florida tort action against the school, despite the existence of sovereign immunity in other states and, in some instances, in Florida. The case of Miami–Dade County School Board v. A.N., Sr., 905 So.2d 203 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005), provides an example in which the parents of a kindergarten student won a jury verdict for monetary damages against the school for failing to protect the student against another student's sexual assault. The Florida Tort Claims Act includes special pre-suit notice provisions, limits damages, and otherwise modifies traditional tort law and procedure. Let our attorneys help your student recover for bullying harm under the Florida Tort Claims Act.
Florida Immunity for Individual School Employees
Your student may not be able to sue the individual school employees whom you feel may be most responsible for your student's bullying harm if your student's claim is their failure to supervise and protect. Under the Florida Tort Claims Act, your student may only sue the school and district, not the teacher or school staff member, who should have prevented the harm. Individual officials retain their immunity unless acting in bad faith, maliciously, or willfully and wantonly. Florida's anti-bullying law likewise offers immunity for certain school employees, providing, “A school employee, school volunteer, student, or parent who promptly reports in good faith an act of bullying or harassment to the appropriate school official designated in the school district's policy and who makes this report in compliance with the procedures set forth in the policy is immune from a cause of action for damages arising out of the reporting itself or any failure to remedy the reported incident.”
Florida Negligence Law and Bullying Victims
While the Florida Tort Claims Act permits you to sue the school for your student's bullying harm, the Act does not create the right of action itself. The Act only waives government agency immunity. Your student's claim against the school depends on proving a tort claim under traditional Florida tort law. Your student's tort claim will be negligence if school teachers and other staff were not directly involved in the bullying but instead failed to reasonably protect your student. Depending on the facts, your student may be able to plead that teachers and other school staff were aware or should have been aware of the bullying but failed to take reasonable steps to monitor, supervise, investigate, warn, and protect your student. Our attorneys can help you articulate the negligence theory for your student's specific case.
Other Florida Tort Law and Bullying Victims
If school teachers and other school staff were directly involved in the bullying, your student may have other Florida tort claims along with or in the alternative to a negligence claim. Florida tort law recognizes assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation claims. Bullying generally involves conduct that may qualify for these kinds of intentional tort claims. If teachers or other school staff commit these acts directly, then they would likely lose their immunity under the Florida Tort Claims Act. School employees who commit intentional wrongs may be acting outside of the scope of employment, meaning that the school may not insure or indemnify them, leaving open the question of collectibility. Your student's better cause of action may be to sue the school for negligence.
Florida's Parental Liability Law and Bullying Victims
Students who commit bullying would not have immunity. Your student could hold the student bullies liable under Florida intentional tort theories like assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Students, though, are often uncollectible. The student bully's parents are likely not liable. Florida's parental liability laws hold parents liable for vandalism and motor vehicle accidents but not generally other torts.
Florida Compensation Theories for Private School Bullying
Just as you may hold a Florida public school liable for bullying harm through a negligence action, you may also hold a Florida private school liable. Private schools and their employees do not have governmental immunity. Your student's available causes of action could thus reach the private school's employees, too.
Federal Laws Compensating for Florida Bullying Harm
While you have substantial rights to pursue a money damages recovery for your student under the Florida Tort Claims Act and Florida negligence law, your student may also have money damages claims under federal law related to the school's violation of constitutional rights and federal anti-discrimination laws. Let us help you evaluate your student's following federal claims, too.
Section 1983 Substantive Due Process Claims for Florida Bullying Cases
Congress long ago enacted a special law, codified at 42 USC Section 1983, allowing money damages suits against state and local officials for violating constitutional rights. Section 1983 authorizes money damages from public agencies and officials, including public schools and their employees, when they cause harm by violating constitutional rights under color of state law. A public school teacher or principal would act under color of state law when disciplining or otherwise directing and affecting students. A Section 1983 claim requires that your student identify the violated constitutional right. You may be able to argue that the school's failure to prevent known bullying violates substantive due process and equal protection rights, although you may have to prove that school officials were deliberately indifferent to your student's harm. But a substantial monetary recovery may be available if your student can prove 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). Our attorneys have the skill and experience to evaluate your student's Section 1983 claim.
Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws and Florida Bullying Compensation
Federal anti-discrimination laws require schools not to discriminate based on race, color, national origin, sex, religion, or disability. Bullies, though, often use those characteristics to carry out their ridicule, intimidation, and harassment. Your student's school wouldn't ordinarily be directly liable under these federal anti-discrimination laws for another student's bullying using these characteristics. But if your student's school fails or refuses to correct discrimination violations about which it knows or should know and exhibits deliberate indifference to your student's harm, then a federal anti-discrimination law recovery may be possible under 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, or Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. We can help you evaluate whether your student has a federal anti-discrimination law claim for money damages for bullying harm.
Damages for Florida Bullying Victims
You may rightly wonder what a Florida tort claim or federal law claim would compensate. If your student can prove a legal right to recover for bullying harm, then Florida's damages laws provide for your student's recovery of both economic and non-economic harm. Economic harms involve out-of-pocket costs like counseling expenses, medical expenses, and replacing stolen or damaged personal items like jewelry, clothing, books, backpacks, glasses, and electronic devices. If your student was unable to work due to bullying injuries, your student may also recover wage loss. If the injuries will impair your student's work in the future, future wage loss and impaired earning capacity are also recoverable.
Recoverable non-economic damages include things that you cannot easily measure, such as pain, suffering, fear, fright, shock, humiliation, mortification, embarrassment, and mental and emotional distress. Non-economic damages awards, though harder to measure, maybe a multiple of the economic loss and may be substantial. Florida law also permits punitive damages to punish the defendant, but only if the school or school officials commit intentional wrongs or are grossly negligent. Florida law defines gross negligence as conduct “so reckless or wanting in care that it constituted a conscious disregard or indifference to the life, safety, or rights of persons exposed to such conduct.”
Pursuing a Florida Civil Action for Bullying
Pursuing a Florida Tort Claims Act claim against your student's school is not ordinary litigation. The special procedural and proof requirements mean that you need skilled and experienced representation to achieve your student's best possible outcome, including a full and fair money damages recovery. Our Education Law Team has that skill and experience. We can help you identify and gather evidence, choose the right court and legal theory, draft and serve the required statutory notice, draft and file the required complaint, and negotiate for the school's early voluntary settlement. If your student's case does not settle to your satisfaction, our attorneys can pursue your student's case through discovery, pretrial, and trial to its best outcome. We can also enforce the money judgment and defend the judgment against appeals. School litigation is complex litigation. Get your student the help your student needs for the best outcome.
Defending Florida School Disciplinary Charges
It may surprise you to know that school officials often charge the bullying victim with various wrongs in a school disciplinary case. The reason is that bullying victims whom the school does not promptly protect often act out in ways that may violate the school's student code of conduct were it not for the bullying. Your student may have followed every code and rule until bullied, while your student may have had to fight, threaten, and disrupt simply in self-defense against the bully. If school officials charge your student with disciplinary violations relating to bullying, we can represent your student through those proceedings while also pursuing your student's bullying claim.
Helping Your Student Avoid Florida School Bullying
You may be able to help your student suffer additional bullying by giving your student sound guidance and tips. Make sure your student knows not to participate in the bullying. Don't let the bully recruit your student to bully other students. Also, make sure your student reports any bullying immediately to teachers and school staff and to you. You need to know so that you can help your student get the protection your student needs from the school. Your student may resist reporting bullying for fear of retaliation from the bully or even from other students or school staff. Reassure your student that retaliation violates the law and makes your student's claim for damages even clearer. You and your student may have to report the bullying to gain any protection or recovery. Let us help your student avoid retaliation harm and recover for all damages.
Representation for Florida Bullying Victims
The Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team is available anywhere in Florida to pursue 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. Get the skilled services and experienced representation your Florida student needs for the best possible outcome and money damages recovery.
