Law Dawg Blog

We wonder if Jerry Hollingsworth and/or Kenneth Anderson still attend ARD meetings. These two gentelemen, principal and assistant principal at Dawson Middle School in Carroll ISD, attended an ARD in the fall of 2003. Six years later they were finally cleared of all charges. SIX YEARS!

What charges? They were accused of libel, slander, malice, gross negligence, malicious prosecution and other assorted sins.

What did Hollingsworth and Patterson do? Well, after attending the ARD, they agreed with the team that the student’s behavior was not a manifestation of his disability. So they assigned the boy to the DAEP.
This sounds an awful lot like a routine day in the life of an assistant principal or principal. They were doing their jobs.

And that’s what brought all those charges down on them in a civil suit alleging all manner of uncivil behavior.

The district court dismissed most of the charges, but the allegation that the two administrators had violated IDEA had to be taken to the Court of Appeals.

That court ruled on New Years Eve, 2009, that there was no IDEA violation and the men were entitled to immunity from liability.

We lawyers often emphasize how much legal protection school officials have, but as this case illustrates, that doesn’t stop people from filing lawsuits. There are probably a few torts that did not get brought up in this case but the plaintiffs alleged a number of them, even though Texas law makes it clear that school officials are immune from personal liability in all but a few situations.

Six years with a civil lawsuit hanging over your head. Probably made Hollingsworth and Patterson a little gun shy about that next ARD meeting. Such is our culture.
You can check this case out at 2009 WL 5184022. We summarize it in the March issue of TSALD. The name of the case is Hollingsworth v. Hackler, decided by the Court of Civil Appeals in Fort Worth on December 31, 2009.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has sent a strong message to parties and their lawyers: be nice! Work cooperatively and don’t bother us unless you have to!

That’s a loose translation of the Court’s holding in el Paso ISD v. R.R., reported in the February issue of TSALD.  The district c court had ordered the EPISD to pay the parent’s attorney $45,000 as the “prevailing party” in a special ed case.  The district argued that the parents were not really the “prevailing party” because the distict had offered them everything they wanted before the case ever went to court.  The 5th Circuit dodged the issue of whether or not the parent was the “prevailing party.”  Instead, the court concluded that it did not matter: even if the parent had prevailed, theyand their attorney had “unreasonably protracted the final resolution of the dispute for over three years.”

The lesson is clear: come to resolution sessions prepared to work in good faith toward a resolution. Don’t turn down a resolution unless you have a good reason to do so.