What Are Your Rights: When A School Fight Goes Too Far

Announcer: The following segment is sponsored by Harding Mazzotti.

Reporter: Just today we learned a 16-year-old girl was arrested Monday, charged with second-degree assault for hitting two 15-year-olds in the head and face with a large thermos mug, a metal thermos. Police say that it happened on a school bus in South Glens Falls. The mother of one of those girls telling us that it broke her daughter’s nose and forced her to go to the hospital, missing school.

We wanted to know what rights parents have when a school fight just goes a little too far. So Paul Harding from Harding Mazzotti is here. Thanks so much for being here with us. So, yeah, what can you do if something like this happens to your child?

Paul: This went so far, right? There could be a fight in school where there’s a bit of a push. It’s broken up. Probably those things we don’t hear much about. But here using this thermos, as you said, that it’s a dangerous weapon and there’s a bad injury here. There’s an arrest as there should be. But two things are happening parallel.

You’ve got the school saying, “Look, I don’t want to bring my kids to a place that’s unsafe. So do something with the folks that you now know are dangerous or at least whether it’s suspension, probably for the rest of the year wouldn’t be that…you know, the year’s ending or remove them to separate parts of the building.” Parents have that right. And of course, the exercise, the right to go to the district…to the police who went to the district attorney who chose to file charges.

Reporter: Right. And can the child or the parents be held liable for something like this?

Paul: So you’ve got the…we’ll call it the perpetrator or the person that the other young woman who swung…who used that cooler as a weapon. Yes. Damages. She could be held liable. Now, what’s her assets? What kind of money? You know, probably there’s not a lot there. The parents would not be held liable for that intentional act of their child. And that question is asked quite a bit. If you give someone dangerous instrumentality, like the parents handing out guns and knives, as someone’s going somewhere, maybe yes. But under this set of facts, a thermos, no.

Reporter: And could injury damages be recovered here?

Paul: Yeah. And I think that’s going to be part of it. So you’re going to have these criminal charges pending. There’ll be a resolution of that. And but they’ll say, “Okay, we’re going to reduce this down to this. But you now have to pay this $10,000 or $12,000 or $15,000 for medical plastic surgery,” whatever else needs to be done. I believe that’ll be part of any plea deal.

Reporter: Would there be a separate civil suit that could be filed in this or that would all be part of the criminal…

Paul: There could be a separate civil suit, but not… The school district, I don’t see that they would be held liable here unless there’s some activity we don’t know about where they knew that this girl had made threats before, “I’m going to do it on the bus on this day,” and they didn’t do something. I think what we’ve got is just we’ve got the liability of the person who did it. And again, the best way to probably recover that money is through the plea deal through the criminal courts.

Reporter: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for explaining it to us.

Paul: Absolutely.

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