The family of a Catholic University student who was gunned down in Petworth is suing the District for $20 million in a wrongful-death suit.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in D.C., alleges that the accused shooter was a juvenile criminal offender who was in the custody of the city’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services at the time of the shooting.

The lawsuit claims the District acted with indifference and negligence in the supervision of the teenager, resulting in the August 2010 killing of 31-year-old Neil Godleski.

A spokesman for the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services on Thursday did not return a phone message for comment.

According to police at the time, Godleski was gunned down in Sherman Circle shortly after midnight while biking home from the restaurant where he worked as a waiter.

Police said 17-year-old Eric D. Foreman fired multiple shots at the cyclist, then stood over the college student and fired two more shots. Foreman raked through Godleski’s pockets, stole $60 and fled. The motive was robbery, police said.

Foreman was a criminal juvenile offender who was supposed to be under the supervision and detention of DYRS, the lawsuit states. Foreman had been sent to live in the Dupree House, a group home at 5619 Colorado Ave. NW.

The suit said Foreman was known to be a gang member and had a propensity for violence, and cited a report that one in five of all homicides in the District involved a youth in the custody of DYRS, either as a suspect or a victim.

The lawsuit comes at a time when Mayor Vince Gray is trying to get a handle on youth violence and the city’s juvenile justice system.

Five of the six people who were shot on Halloween were teenagers, and the 17-year-old boy who was shot in the head in Georgetown that night was also under the supervision of DYRS, sources have told The Washington Examiner.

The teenager accused of shooting a cabbie over 75 cents last week in Northeast had escaped from a group home at the time of the slaying, sources said. He was later found to have hid at the home of his aunt, a DYRS counselor.

And the teen who was arrested last week in a fatal stabbing of another teen in a Petworth playground also had escaped custody of the youth agency.

Since changing it’s Juvenile policies, DYRS has had a series of missteps leading to multiple fatalities.

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failing to protect a high school student who was beaten by three schoolmates minutes after she asked an assistant principal for protection. The Genesee County jury found the administrator had acted with reckless disregard for the student’s safety. The judgment in Shelby v. LeRoy Central School District an example of tort litigation losses nationally by school districts.

Crystal Shelby, suffered brain injuries from a May 1995 beating by three girls in the hallway of Le Roy High School, located about 25 miles from Rochester, N.Y.

“The lessons here for school districts are: ‘Don’t disregard a student who asks for help,’ and ‘You have to be effective in your discipline,’ ” said plaintiff’s counsel Terry D. Smith of Smith, Keller, Miner & O’Shea of Buffalo, N.Y. Translation. It is not enough to have some discipline policy in place. The policy has to be effective in maintaining a safe environment conducive to learning.

“The girls who assaulted Crystal were three hard cases who had been disciplined and suspended time and again.” According to attorneys on both sides, the night before the assault Shelby had an argument with the three girls, who explicitly threatened to attack her the following day in school. The following morning Shelby told assistant principal Neil O’Brien that she had been threatened but he took no action and told the girl to proceed to her homeroom.

During the liability phase of the bifurcated trial the jury found O’Brien had acted with reckless disregard for Shelby’s safety. The three girls attacked Shelby in the hallway, beating her head with a padlock and slamming her headfirst into a wall. She suffers hydrocephalus, a condition known in lay terms as water on the brain and characterized by dangerous pooling of fluid in the cranium. She has endured seven hospital stays and six brain surgeries to treat the condition, according to Brian Mahoney, who represented Shelby along with Smith. Shelby has two shunts in her cranium to drain fluid. She suffers persistent cognitive difficulties.

Parents sued Mt. Diablo Unified School District in the District Court for the Northern District of California for failing to protect their 14-year old son who was a special education student with emotional and behavioral disabilities enrolled at the Mt. Diablo Unified School District.

The facts alleged were that since January 27, 2009, Colbey has been eligible for special education services in the District under the category of “Emotional Disturbance”. Colbey received an Individualized Education Program (“IEP”) that required a small specialized setting with frequent individual support where Colbey would be protected from bullying and harassment by other students.

Despite his diagnoses and the recommendations of the IEP team, the District failed to protect Colbey from harassment and assault by peers on the school bus and in his segregated classrooms. School staff allegedly allowed Colbey to be harassed by other students in his program, and in one instance placed him in a “time-out room” with another student who physically attacked and injured Colbey, causing a broken collarbone and fear of returning to school

The District Court held that it had jurisdiction over the case and the settlement offer, and that Colbey was entitled to damages for the school’s failure to protect him from physical assault by another student.

The family of a boy who was shot to death at a Madison County middle school in 2010 is suing Madison school officials and others. They say the school officials failed to protect him from a problem student.

The News Courier reports (http://bit.ly/z6WjDi ) the lawsuit was filed Thursday in Madison County.

The suit states that school officials — including the school board, Superintendent Dee Fowler and Principal Robbie Smith — failed to protect Todd Brown from another student who had a history of behavioral issues.

Brown’s family maintains that the other student should not have been transferred to Discovery Middle School because of a history of bad behavior, and that school officials were aware of that history.

In March 2011 Judge Richard Caputo (Adam C. v. Scranton School District, 2011 WL 996171 (M.D. PA 2011)), ruled that the Schools knew that fights were not at all uncommon, that “kids were always getting hurt”  that “there were fights every day” and “police were frequently called to the school.”

The court also found that despite the frequency of fights, many of the staff were not trained in behavior management techniques or how to intervene in disputes.

Further the Court found that Plaintiff-student was involved in approximately twenty fights with other children.  That in April 2005 Adam was involved in a series of verbal exchanges with another student who had a history of behavior problems.  The verbal confrontation escalated to threats and ultimately physical blows.  The other child punched Adam, and both students then exchanged blows.

Following the fight, Adam’s mother was called to pick him up.  She noticed that one side of his face was swollen, and she took him to the emergency room.   Adam suffered an aneurism, headaches, eye damage and a decrease in cognitive functioning as a result of this fight.

In a summary judgment order, the Court ruled/found as follows:

• [T]he environment at Lourdesmont was, in many senses, awful. Fights occurred daily; students perpetrated violence against each other and against teachers, walked out of classes, and damaged school property. With a maximum of three staff members available to respond to fights, and only one being on duty at times, Lourdesmont had a demonstrated, perpetually inadequate system for crisis management. Other shortcomings at Lourdesmont only compounded these problems: NEIU teachers were forbidden from intervening in fights; teachers and therapists alike had little to no training in defusing students’ aggression.
• Public schools have an obligation to provide a free and appropriate public education to disabled students. 345 C.F.R. 104.33(a) (defining “appropriate education” in part as an education “designed to meet individual educational needs of handicapped persons as adequately as the needs of non-handicapped persons are met”).
• Private schools have no obligation to provide an appropriate education to disabled children. 34 C.F.R. 104.33 (providing FAPE only required for a “recipient that operates a public educational program”)
• A public school cannot abdicate its responsibilities to provide appropriate educations to disabled students by warehousing some in an environment utterly unequipped to meet their needs.  Thus Scranton School District (a public school) may be liable for denying Adam his FAPE by inappropriate placement.
• While a private school has no obligation under FAPE, Title III of the ADA defines an elementary private school or hospital as a place of public accommodation.  Thus a private school can be liable for discrimination under the Rehabilitation Act (RA) and ADA.  No discrimination was found in this instance.
• Private schools are held to a standard of ordinary negligence.  A negligence action requires that the plaintiffs prove: “(1) a legally recognized duty or obligation owed them; (2) a breach of that duty; (3) a causal connection between the breach of duty and the resulting injury, and (4) actual loss or damage. 
• The legally recognized duty in this instance is that schools have a duty of reasonable care under the circumstances.  While no liability attaches where personnel was competent, acted reasonable or where the injury was not reasonably foreseeable, here Plaintiff showed that the fight was foreseeable as the child that struck Adam was known to have “behavior issues” and suffer from emotional disturbance.  Additionally, this child had been involved in at least one other physical confrontation with another student. 
• The evidence presented by the Plaintiff was sufficient to require the case to go to a jury to determine whether the staff were properly trained and equipped to handle the many physical altercations occurring at school.

Thus Schools have a Duty to Train Staff In Breaking Up Fights and Defusing Student’s Aggression when the school is on notice that there are students at the school with aggression, emotional and behavioral issues.