Kentucky Bullying Victim Representation
Your Kentucky elementary or secondary student shouldn't have to suffer bullying to get a quality education. The Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team is available in Louisville, Lexington, Fayette, Bowling Green, Owensboro, Covington, Georgetown, Richmond, Florence, and across Kentucky to help your grade school student make a monetary recovery for bullying harm. Get the representation your student needs. Call 888.535.3686 now or use our contact form to tell us about your student's case involving Kentucky school bullying.
Why Get Kentucky Bullying Victim Representation
Your student's grade-school development is critically important, as you well know. A strong, stable, and successful grade school experience is your student's foundation on which to build through the following years. Each year is important to your student. Losing a year to bullying harm can set your student back in the long term. State and federal laws give your student opportunities to win prompt relief from bullying. Those laws may also offer your student a substantial monetary recovery that could make a difference to your student's present and future flourishing. Your best move when you suspect that your student is a bullying victim is to retain our premier Education Law Team's representation.
Bullying as a National Problem
Bullying isn't just a Kentucky issue. The National Association of School Nurses instead calls bullying a national problem. According to one research site, Kentucky ranks 26th among the fifty states on various measures of the prevalence of bullying in its schools. School nurses are often among the first to learn of bullying when they see students for nursing care for the physical, mental, and emotional injuries bullying causes. When school nurses call bullying a national problem, you know you've got a problem.
Policymakers also know the harm bullying causes. You might wrongly assume that bullying simply involves physical injury. If your student can avoid the bully's hitting, shoving, tripping, and other physical altercations, then your student might be alright. But policymakers know better. Bullying can have a wide range of bad effects, from causing your student to skip school, cut classes, and withdraw from school activities to causing your student to avoid and abandon studies and perform poorly so as not to draw the bully's attention. Bullying can stunt academic growth, leading to low and failing grades, depression, social isolation, and school dismissal or dropout, as the Centers for Disease Control reports. Medical experts even connect student suicide rates with school bullying. Schools have a serious bullying problem.
Money Recoveries in Bullying Cases
One way that state courts and lawmakers have addressed bullying is to provide monetary recoveries for bullying harm. Cases in Kentucky have held school districts liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars in jury verdicts or voluntary settlements under federal laws reaching bullying harm. Those cases involved alleged verbal and physical abuse, slurs, death threats, stabbings, and even sexual assaults, much or all of it ignored or minimized by indifferent school officials. The laws are there for such recoveries.
But those laws are also quite complex, involving a mix of federal substantive law and state damages law and procedures. Your student's case may also require exhausting school administrative remedies or federal or state agency remedies. Schools may also vigorously defend these cases, even accusing the student victim of participating in or consenting to the wrongdoing. Don't retain unqualified local counsel. Instead, get the skilled and experienced help of our premier Education Law Team.
Bullying in Kentucky Grade Schools
Kentucky Department of Education statistics show that bullying is generally the number one behavioral violation, constituting about forty percent of the tens of thousands of annual behavioral violations. Bullying isn't rare. It's common, occurring in thousands of cases annually. Centers for Disease Control statistics likewise show a frightening number of bullying and bullying-related incidents in Kentucky public schools. Those incidents include not only bullying and cyberbullying but also weapons threats, physical fights, beatings, stabbings, shootings, and dating violence. The same data for Kentucky public schools shows a frightening number of attempted suicides and injuries from such attempts. Bullying certainly happens in Kentucky schools. We are here to help you and your student make a monetary recovery for bullying harm.
Kentucky Anti-Bullying Laws
The Kentucky legislature, like legislatures in most U.S. states, has addressed school bullying harm. Kentucky's state anti-bullying laws can provide the basis for federal civil rights claims for money damages for bullying harm. Kentucky Statute Section 158.148 requires schools in the state to adopt a student code of conduct that prohibits, prevents, and punishes bullying. The schools must also train in anti-bullying measures, keep statistics on bullying incidents, and share those statistics with the state and the public. Kentucky schools must also give you and your student a complaint procedure through which to alert school teachers, staff, and administrators of bullying incidents. Your use of that procedure may be critical to your student's money damages recovery. Kentucky Statutes Section 158.444 further authorizes the Kentucky Department of Education to promulgate regulations carrying out the legislature's anti-bullying mandates.
Kentucky's Bullying Definition
Kentucky Statutes Section 158.148 defines bullying as “any unwanted verbal, physical, or social behavior among students that involves a real or perceived power imbalance and is repeated or has the potential to be repeated….” The behavior must also occur “on school premises, on school-sponsored transportation, or at a school-sponsored event” or “disrupt[] the education process.”
A related Kentucky Statutes Section 525.070 defines the similar offense of “harassment” to include when a student, while on school premises or school-sponsored transportation or at a school-sponsored event, “damages or commits a theft of the property of another student,” “[s]ubstantially disrupts the operation of the school,” or “creates a hostile environment by means of any gestures, written communications, oral statements, or physical acts that a reasonable person under the circumstances should know would cause another student to suffer fear of physical harm, intimidation, humiliation, or embarrassment.” Examples that Kentucky's bullying and harassment definitions would likely cover include:
- threats of physical harm, social embarrassment, or property damage that a bully makes toward a student victim more than one time;
- physical injury when a bully hits, shoves, kicks, slaps, pulls the hair of, or otherwise physically assaults a student victim more than one time;
- mental or emotional harm when a bully teases, ridicules, or mocks a student victim more than one time;
- property loss or damage when a bully steals, damages, or destroys textbooks, completed or partially completed written assignments, laptop computers, tablets, clothing, backpacks or handbags, glasses, or other personal items of a student victim more than one time;
- severe or pervasive hostile acts that a reasonable student would regard as intimidating and abusive and would affect a reasonable student's ability to participate in educational activities;
- disrupting school participation in any abusive way, causing a student victim to withdraw from school or extracurricular activities to avoid further bullying.
Kentucky's Bullying Definition Does Not Expressly Include Discrimination
Many states include anti-discrimination language in their bullying laws. Kentucky is not among those states. Kentucky's school anti-bullying and anti-harassment laws do not mention protected characteristics like the student victim's race or sex. Bullies tend to target certain characteristics of their student victims, including things like height, weight, other physical appearance, clothing, and hairstyle. But bullies may also target characteristics that state and federal anti-discrimination laws protect, like the student victim's race, color, national origin, sex, religion, or disability. While Kentucky state laws do not expressly include discrimination against these characteristics in anti-bullying protections, courts would very likely construe a bully's discriminatory slurs and actions as a heightened form of bullying in Kentucky schools, as elsewhere.
Kentucky's Bullying Definition Includes Cyberbullying
Kentucky's anti-bullying statute does not expressly mention or prohibit cyberbullying, meaning bullying by electronic means. But Kentucky's anti-harassment statutes do expressly include electronic communications between students as a form of prohibited harassment. So, the better construction is that Kentucky law clearly prohibits cyberbullying. The relevant statute, Kentucky Statutes Section 525.080, defines unlawful harassment whenever one
“[c]ommunicates, while enrolled as a student in a local school district, with or about another school student, anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, the internet, telegraph, mail, or any other form of electronic or written communication in a manner which a reasonable person under the circumstances should know would cause the other student to suffer fear of physical harm, intimidation, humiliation, or embarrassment and which serves no purpose of legitimate communication.”
Kentucky's Bullying Definition Protects Civil Exchanges
Kentucky's anti-bullying law, Kentucky Statutes Section 158.148, expressly protects students who make civil exchanges of views that other students may regard as offensive or even harassing. The statute states that its bullying definition “shall not be interpreted to prohibit civil exchange of opinions or debate or cultural practices protected under the state or federal Constitution where the opinion expressed does not otherwise materially or substantially disrupt the education process.”
Kentucky Civil Liability Compensating Bullying Victims
Kentucky's anti-bullying law, Kentucky Statutes Section 158.148, does not expressly authorize you to sue in civil court for monetary damages for bullying harm. Nor does the statute expressly prohibit private civil lawsuits for monetary damages for injuries from bullying harm. Kentucky's anti-bullying statutes are silent on private rights of monetary recovery. That silence is not unusual among the fifty states. Many states leave monetary recoveries for bullying harm to other state or federal laws outside of laws on bullying. Let us help you determine whether you and your student have those rights under those other laws.
Kentucky Governmental Liability Law and Bullying Claimants
States often claim governmental immunity for their agencies, officials, and subdivisions, including public school districts, boards, and officials. Governmental immunity means that you cannot sue to recover for personal injuries the government causes through its negligence or carelessness. Kentucky is among those many states with broad governmental immunity. Kentucky Statutes Section 49.060 expressly preserves that immunity unless waived by following statutory sections. The following statutory sections preserve governmental immunity, rather than waive it, for government functions and for government officials engaged in discretionary functions. These laws are complex, and they may allow for exceptions depending on your student's circumstances. But generally, you and your student would find it difficult, at best, to make a monetary damages recovery under Kentucky negligence laws against a school official or district for carelessly ignoring bullying harm.
Other Kentucky Tort Law and Bullying Victims
Despite the difficulty of recovering for bullying harm under Kentucky negligence law, because of governmental immunity, you and your student may, in special cases, find a recovery available under other Kentucky tort laws. Recovery under those other state tort laws would generally require an extraordinary case of school or school official wrong, such as the intentional infliction by school officials of your student's severe emotional distress or a direct assault and battery a school employee commits. Defamation and invasion of privacy may be other potential tort claims in extraordinary bullying cases, although immunity laws may complicate even those extraordinary claims.
You and your student would, of course, have civil tort-law recovery rights directly against the bully or bullies committing the wrongs that injured your student. However, students often lack the money or other assets out of which to make a recovery. And liability insurance generally does not cover intentional wrongs like bullying. Let us help you and your student evaluate your Kentucky state law recovery rights. You and your student may have such a recovery, depending on special circumstances unusual to your case.
Federal Laws Compensating for Bullying Harm
Your Kentucky grade-school student more likely has a federal remedy through which to recover money damages from the school and its officials for bullying harm. If you don't have Kentucky state law recovery rights because of governmental immunity, then you may well have federal law rights. Our attorneys can help you evaluate and pursue those federal rights in federal district court or another appropriate administrative forum. Unlike many local attorneys, our attorneys have substantial skill and experience in civil litigation against public schools in the federal courts. Do not rely on unqualified local counsel to evaluate those rights. Let us help you with a sound and reliable evaluation and with skilled representation.
Section 1983 Substantive Due Process Claims
You and your student may well have a federal Section 1983 claim to recover for bullying harm, especially if you, your students, or others reported the bullying, and school officials were afterward deliberately indifferent to the harm that the bullying was causing your student. Congress enacted the federal statute 42 USC Section 1983 after the Civil War to provide for a monetary recovery against state and local officials who were using their state government authority to violate constitutional rights. Courts have long construed Section 1983 to provide money recoveries against state and local agencies deliberately ignoring and thus violating constitutional rights.
Your student's constitutional rights include substantive due process and equal protection rights against unlawful public school actions. Federal courts in Kentucky and elsewhere have supported substantial jury verdicts and settlements in bullying cases where the evidence of the school's deliberate indifference to student bullying victim harm is present. Winning theories have included a special duty and relationship, Soper v. Hoben, 195 F.3d 845, 852 (6th Cir. 1999), a state-created danger, Jones v. Reynolds, 438 F.3d 685, 690 (6th Cir. 2006), and a shocks the conscience test, Range v. Douglas, 763 F.3d 573, 588 (6th Cir. 2014). Let us help you and your student investigate and pursue your student's Section 1983 claims for Kentucky public school bullying harm.
Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws and Bullying Compensation
Federal anti-discrimination laws may provide another theory under which you and your student may make a money recovery for Kentucky public school bullying harm. If together we discover evidence that school officials were aware that the bully in your student's case used your student's protected race, color, national origin, religion, sex, or disability as a motivation for the bullying, Section 1983 and other laws may once again provide a money recovery. These federal anti-discrimination laws may support your student's federal cause of action:
- Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (the ADA);
- Title IV or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964;
- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX);
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504);
- the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (the IDEA law).
Damages Categories for Kentucky Bullying Victims
You may wonder how student bullying victims make money recoveries into the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. While federal law may provide the liability theory, federal courts generally look to state damages law for guidance on how to measure the recovery. Kentucky state damages law recognizes two forms of personal injury damages. Those two forms include economic losses and non-economic losses.
Economic Recoveries for Kentucky Public School Bullying Harm
You and your student may have incurred economic losses for your student's bullying harm. Economic losses generally mean out-of-pocket losses, measured in specific dollars and cents. Your student's economic losses may have included medical examination and treatment for physical injuries, mental health examination and counseling for mental and emotional injuries, work loss if injuries kept your student from continuing in or taking a job, and replacement of personal property such as electronic devices, clothing, and glasses that the bully damaged or destroyed.
Non-Economic Recoveries for Kentucky Public School Bullying Harm
Your student likely also incurred non-economic losses from the bullying harm. Non-economic losses refer to losses not clearly measured in out-of-pocket terms. Non-economic losses in Kentucky and other states focus on categories like pain and suffering from physical injury, mental and emotional distress, fear, fright, shock, mortification, embarrassment, and loss of enjoyment of life. Notice that these losses do not have specific measures. Juries may generally award what they determine to be reasonable amounts to compensate your student for these losses. Even if economic losses are few and small, juries have awarded substantial sums for non-economic losses.
Punitive Damages for Kentucky Public School Bullying Harm
Kentucky Statutes Section 411.184 further allows for punitive damages in cases where the plaintiff can show by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with oppression, fraud, or malice. Punitive damages punish the defendant rather than compensate the victim. A case of oppression, fraud, or malice may be highly unusual against school officials in the bullying setting but not unprecedented. Punitive damages, in some cases, can run into a multiple of the above compensatory damages. Let us help you determine and prove your student's bullying damages.
Choosing an Attorney for a Kentucky Civil Action for Bullying
Your choice of an attorney team to pursue your student's Kentucky civil action for bullying harm may well make a complete difference in your student's outcome. As the above discussion should clearly show you, these cases involve complex mixes of state, federal, academic, administrative, and regulatory laws and procedures. Few local lawyers have the knowledge, skill, and experience to handle these cases. Our Education Law Team brings everything you need for your student's best possible outcome. We can investigate your case, research the applicable Kentucky laws, exhaust your student's administrative remedies as necessary, choose the best state or federal forum and theories, and commence the litigation as necessary after appropriate attempts at voluntary resolution.
Defending Disciplinary Charges Against Bullying Victims
In the course of raising bullying complaints with your student's school, your student may face retaliatory bullying charges. The bully or other bullying victims may claim that your student participated in bullying, or school officials may construe your student's self-defense as if it were instead bullying. Our attorneys can help you defend your student against those charges.
Avoiding Kentucky School Bullying
While your student may well deserve a substantial money recovery for bullying harm, you and your student may still be able to minimize continuing bullying while maximizing your chance of getting appropriate relief. Follow these tips. Be sure your student reports each and every instance of bullying. Be sure your student tells you, too, whenever suffering bullying so that you can duplicate and document the reports. Be sure your student knows that the school must protect your student from retaliation. And be sure your student doesn't join the bully. Let your student know that our attorneys are here to help.
Representation for Kentucky Bullying Victims
The Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team is available to represent your student in Louisville, Lexington, Fayette, Bowling Green, Owensboro, Covington, Georgetown, Richmond, Florence, or at any other location across Kentucky, in a civil action for money damages for bullying harm. Our attorneys have helped hundreds of students across the country gain relief from bullying and other school issues. Call 888.535.3686 now or use our contact form to tell us about your case. Get the skilled and experienced attorney representation your Kentucky grade school student needs.
