Massachusetts Bullying Victim Representation
We're here to help Massachusetts grade school bullying victims. Your Massachusetts elementary or secondary student deserves an education without the distraction and harm of school bullying. You know how important your student's school development is in grade school years. Every year counts. Losing a productive year can have long-term academic impacts while also affecting your student's social and emotional development.
Fortunately, federal and state laws, rules, and procedures combine to give you and your student a fighting chance at stopping bullying in its tracks. You and your student may also be able to hold your student's Massachusetts school civilly liable for damages the bullying has caused your student. You may be able to make a monetary recovery for your student that could help fund your student's higher education or otherwise make a real difference in your student's future and life.
To get your student justice through civil litigation against your student's school, though, you'll need highly qualified, skilled, and experienced representation. The Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team is available in Boston, Lowell, Worcester, Cambridge, Springfield, Brockton, and across Massachusetts 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 case. Retain us to help your student get protection from bullying and money damages for bullying harm your student deserves.
Bullying as a National Problem
Bullying is a national problem, not just a Massachusetts problem, according to the leaders of the National Association of School Nurses. School nurses should know. They deal firsthand with the injury and harm bullying causes in school. Educators and policymakers nationwide know that bullying can cause physical, mental, and emotional harm. They also report that bullying can cause students to abandon studies so as not to catch the attention of the bullies, leading to lower academic performance and stunted growth of important academic skills.
Bullying's mental and emotional impacts work together with the academic impacts to cause depression, academic failure, and increased school dismissal or dropout rates, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Medical studies even report increased student suicide connected with school bullying. Elementary and secondary school students depend heavily on school relationships. When bullying destroys those relationships, students suffer.
Money Recoveries in Bullying Cases
Verdict and settlement reports indicate that monetary recoveries for bullying occur nationwide in connection with serious injury cases. Massachusetts parents have also made substantial monetary recoveries for student deaths and injuries from school bullying, according to the same reports. Civil litigation has held both public grade schools and private grade schools liable for money damages relating to student suicide deaths from severe school bullying. The recoveries can reach into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, or beyond in the most serious cases. But, the laws that may provide for monetary recovery in civil litigation can be much more complex than the laws governing routine personal injury litigation from motor vehicle accidents and the like. Recoveries are generally only made with highly qualified, skilled, and experienced legal representation from attorneys willing to litigate in federal court. Get our help for your student's case.
Bullying in Massachusetts Grade Schools
Massachusetts Department of Education statistics show hundreds, and in some years well over a thousand, bullying incidents each year in Massachusetts grade schools. The same statistics show that only about a quarter of reported bullying incidents result in discipline. Well over a hundred Massachusetts school districts report bullying incidents each year, in some years more than two hundred districts. A National Library of Medicine research article summarizing a regional census of bullying incidents indicates that more than a quarter of metropolitan-west Massachusetts high school students reported bullying in the prior year, with 15% of students reporting cyberbullying. The bullying victims naturally reported both lower academic performance and lower attachment to school. A Centers for Disease Control report indicates that Massachusetts middle school students suffer even higher rates of bullying, at nearly 44%, well above the high school rate of 25%. We are available in Massachusetts to help you pursue a monetary recovery for your student and to end bullying against your student.
Massachusetts Anti-Bullying Laws
The Massachusetts legislature, like legislatures in the vast majority of U.S. states, has responded to the state's bullying problem with anti-bullying laws. These laws can provide a substantial basis on which to hold schools accountable when school officials deliberately ignore bullying reports. Massachusetts Code Section 370 prohibits bullying. The same law requires schools to provide anti-bullying instruction to students and anti-bullying training to teachers and other school staff. It also requires school officials to provide a complaint procedure and follow up on complaints to investigate and resolve reports of bullying, including taking appropriate disciplinary action against students committing bullying acts. Schools must also report bullying data to the state for analysis.
Acting under the Massachusetts legislature's authority, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has adopted regulations at Massachusetts Administrative Code 49.00 et seq. carrying the state's anti-bullying commitment into further effect. The Department's regulations require schools to promptly notify parents of bullying victims, including telling parents the steps the school is taking to prevent repeated acts. School leaders must also work with local law enforcement to promptly report suspected criminal acts of bullying. Our attorneys can help you invoke these Massachusetts laws and regulations to hold the school accountable to your student through civil litigation as necessary.
Massachusetts's Bullying Definition
Massachusetts Code Section 370 defines bullying to include “the repeated use” either by students or school personnel or volunteers, “of a written, verbal or electronic expression or a physical act or gesture” directed at the student victim, that has any one of the following five different effects: (1) the actions cause harms the victim physically or emotionally or damages the victim's property; (2) the actions place the victim in reasonable fear of harm or property damage; (3) the actions create a school hostile environment for the victim; (4) the actions infringe on the victim's school rights; or (5) the actions materially and substantially disrupt the school's orderly operation. The same law defines a hostile environment as “a situation in which bullying causes the school environment to be permeated with intimidation, ridicule, or insult that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the student's education.” Examples that Massachusetts's definition would likely cover include:
- physical harm from the bully shoving, striking, or otherwise assaulting and beating up the student victim more than once;
- emotional harm from the bully mocking, ridiculing, and embarrassing the student victim more than once;
- property damage from the bully knocking books, bags, electronic devices, glasses, or other personal items from the student victim's hands more than once;
- threats by the bully to do any of the above acts more than once;
- a hostile school environment after the bully's repeated acts cause other students to tease, mock, isolate, and offend the student victim for having been the bully's target;
- infringing on school rights after the bully's repeated acts cause the student victim to withdraw from studies, co-curricular activities, and extracurricular activities to avoid further bullying; and
- substantial school disruption from any of the above acts, causing the student victim to have to leave class, avoid using hallways and restrooms, and skip school or class.
Where Bullying May Occur Under Massachusetts' Bullying Definition
Massachusetts Code Section 370 prohibits bullying not only on school grounds but also on immediately adjacent property. The same law also prohibits bullying at school-sponsored events and school-related activities off school grounds. The law also prohibits bullying at bus stops and on school buses. The same law even reaches off-campus bullying that is not school-related if it creates a hostile school environment, infringes on the victim's rights, or substantially disrupts the school's orderly operation.
Massachusetts' Bullying Definition Includes Discrimination
Bullies often target the student victim's race, sex, religion, disability, or other characteristics that anti-discrimination laws protect. Most states include anti-discrimination language in their bullying laws. Massachusetts is among those states. Massachusetts Code Section 370(d)(3) requires schools to protect students against bullying that unlawfully discriminates based on protected characteristics and vulnerabilities.
Massachusetts' Bullying Definition Includes Cyberbullying
Massachusetts Code Section 370 prohibits cyberbullying. The law's definition of bullying ends by stating simply, “bullying shall include cyberbullying.” The law then separately defines cyberbullying to include bullying using any “technology or electronic communication.” The cyberbullying definition includes any “transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence” by “wire, radio, electromagnetic, photo electronic or photo optical system.” The law specifically mentions email, internet communications, and instant messaging, and includes web pages or blog posts assuming another's identity.
Massachusetts Civil Liability Compensating Bullying Victims
The Massachusetts bullying law does not authorize you to sue in civil court for school violations that result in bullying harm. Your money damages action to recover for your student's bullying harm must be under other state or federal law. Massachusetts Code Section 370 states expressly, “Nothing in this section shall supersede or replace existing rights or remedies under any other general or special law, nor shall this section create a private right of action.” Our attorneys can help you determine your student's theories to recover money damages in civil litigation against the school over bullying harm.
Massachusetts Governmental Liability Law and Bullying Claimants
State laws often claim governmental immunity, preventing or limiting civil lawsuits against government employees for violations of law or reckless or careless acts that result in injury, loss, or other damage. Massachusetts has a Tort Claims Act that prohibits lawsuits in most cases against the individual public official, like a school teacher or principal, whose law violation or negligence leads to harm, like a bullying victim's damages. Section 2 of the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act, though, permits civil lawsuits against the public official's agency employer, which in the case of bullying would be the public school district. The Tort Claims Act does not in itself provide the substantive legal theory for recovery. The Act simply waives governmental immunity. The parent and student suing the school district for bullying harm must plead a legal theory of recovery that other Massachusetts law recognizes.
Massachusetts Negligence Law and Bullying Victims
Negligence would be one potential theory for recovery against the school for bullying harm. Massachusetts law, like the law in other states, permits individuals harmed by the fault of another to sue for money damages the fault causes. A negligence theory must allege that the school owed your student a duty of reasonable care. In the case of bullying, Massachusetts Code Section 370 states several such duties to reasonably monitor for bullying incidents, train and instruct against bullying, and investigate and address bullying complaints. You and your student may be able to show that the school knew or should have known of the bullying but unreasonably failed to prevent and correct it, leading to your student's further harm. Our attorneys can investigate and plead the available negligence theories.
Other Massachusetts Tort Law and Bullying Victims
Your student may have other theories for recovery under Massachusetts tort law. Intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, battery, and defamation theories may apply if school officials committed, authorized, or ratified the bullying harms. Such extraordinary cases do occur. You and your student may, of course, sue the student bully under intentional tort theories, but students don't generally have money to pay for damages. Our attorneys can determine your student's other available theories.
Compensation for Massachusetts Private School Bullying
Massachusetts private school teachers and staff do not have the governmental immunity that the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act grants to public school teachers and staff. You may sue your student's private school and its employees under any available legal theory like those above and below.
Federal Laws Compensating for Bullying Harm
Your student may also have a cause of action against the school for monetary damages under federal law, even if the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act does not provide such a remedy under state law. Federal claims for monetary damages add a level of complexity to the legal analysis. Federal law does not have a general negligence law providing for recovery of damages caused by another's fault. But federal theories generally avoid state law immunities. Bullying claimants may prefer to seek federal remedies in federal court. We can help you pursue your student's federal claims, too.
Section 1983 Substantive Due Process Claims
In the mid-1800s, shortly after the Civil War, Congress enacted the federal statute 42 USC Section 1983, providing a money damages remedy against state and local agencies and officials who use state law to violate constitutional rights. School officials who deliberately refuse to address known acts of bullying may violate your student's substantive due process and equal protection rights. Federal courts have made substantial money awards in cases of that type, on proof of deliberate indifference to harm from violating clearly established rights. Successful theories have included 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), and shocks the conscience test, Range v. Douglas, 763 F.3d 573, 588 (6th Cir. 2014). We can investigate and pursue your student's Section 1983 claims.
Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws and Bullying Compensation
Section 1983 may authorize a civil action in conjunction with federal anti-discrimination laws, if the bully in your student's case discriminated or harassed your student based on your student's protected race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual violence, disability, and related categories. Any one or more of these federal anti-discrimination laws may support a federal cause of action for money damages:
- Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act;
- Title IV or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964;
- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972;
- Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973;
- the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Damages Types for Massachusetts Bullying Victims
Massachusetts tort law authorizes compensatory damages. Civil courts award compensatory damages to make the injured party whole. Compensatory damages may thus generally include any loss, injury, or damage the bullied student can prove flows naturally and foreseeably from the school's unreasonable failure to prevent the bullying harm. Those damages may be economic or non-economic in nature. Economic damages may include medical expenses, counseling expenses, replacement or repair of damaged personal items, and even wage loss if your student was unable to work because of bullying injuries. Non-economic damages, though, may be significantly greater. Non-economic damages compensate for pain, suffering, fear, fright, shock, humiliation, mortification, embarrassment, mental and emotional distress, and lost enjoyment of life. Juries tend to award significantly more in non-economic damages than in economic damages. We can help you determine your student's recoverable damages under Massachusetts law.
Pursuing a Massachusetts Civil Action for Bullying
Do not expect just any local lawyer to have the qualifications, skill, and experience to pursue the above state and federal remedies for bullying harm. Few attorneys sue government agencies and officials in tort cases because of the difficulty, uncertainty, cost, and complexity of the cases. The Lento Law Firm's Education Law Team has the necessary qualifications. Our attorneys can investigate your student's case, identify and acquire the supporting evidence, plead the theories necessary to avoid governmental immunity, and file and pursue the case in state or federal court through discovery, pretrial motions, and trial, as necessary.
Defending Disciplinary Charges Against Bullying Victims
Do not be surprised if your student, although a bullying victim, faces school disciplinary charges. Educators and policymakers know that bullying victims often act out in ways that they would not ordinarily do but for the effects of the bullying. The acting out may involve skipping classes to avoid contact with the bully or embarrassment in front of classmates, arriving late for class so that the bully has no opportunity for action, ignoring assignments so as not to attract attention to superior academic skills, and even class disruption and teacher disrespect related to the humiliation, fear, and frustration. Our Education Law Team can help you and your student defend disciplinary charges while investigating and pursuing the money damages case for bullying harm.
Avoiding Massachusetts School Bullying
Even as you pursue a civil money damages claim, consider ways in which you may be able to help your student avoid bullying and reduce bullying's impact. You would like to see a monetary recovery for your student. But you also don't want to see your student suffer additional bullying harm. These recommendations can both reduce bullying while improving your student's claim for relief.
Ensure that your student immediately reports each bullying incident to the teacher, principal, or school staff. Ensure that your student also immediately tells you of any bullying incidents so that you, too, can report each incident to responsible school officials. Ensure that your student knows that the school must protect your student against retaliation for reporting bullying. If the school or bully retaliates, your student will have additional liability proof and damages claims. Make sure that your student knows not to join the bully in committing other bullying acts against other students. Bullies sometimes use bullying to recruit student victims to the bullying cause. Don't let your student join the other side. And above all, let your student know that we are here to help you help your student through the process to end bullying and recover monetary damages for bullying harm.
Representation for Massachusetts Bullying Victims
Don't delay when your Massachusetts grade school student needs help. Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Education Law Team to represent your student in a 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 use our contact form to tell us about your case. Get the qualified, skilled, and experienced representation your Massachusetts grade school student needs.
