District’s growth has legal caseload on rise

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Oct. 8, 1998 | 11:28 a.m.

Pizza Hut delivery man James Kostas will never get a tip this big.

Three years after he took a tumble in a puddle of water at Green Valley High School while delivering 10 pizzas, Kostas is $50,000 richer.

Kostas sued the Clark County School District after badly twisting his knee, which required surgery. He argued the district knew that the slick spot he stepped in was a hazard.

"It was a clear case of liability," said John Greenman, Kostas' lawyer. "It wasn't trumped-up, soft-tissue damage. He had a permanent disability." Kostas himself declined comment.

The district cut Kostas a check in April 1998. Case closed.

But the school district has plenty of legal entanglements left to sort out.

These days, school lawyers are dealing with a record number of lawsuits -- about 140. That's up from 34 in 1990.

Lawyers say that as the district grows, so does their caseload. The district has about 200,000 students, up from 122,000 eight years ago.

"When you're this big, you are going to have interactions between people that lead to lawsuits," Bill Hoffman, lawyer for the school district, said.

Legal costs for the taxpayer-fed school district also have increased.

The district's budget for its legal department is about $1.6 million this year. That includes salaries for the district's six in-house lawyers, expert witnesses, office materials and payments to private law firms.

That figure doesn't include the amount the district spends each year in lawsuit awards and settlements. District lawyers were unable to calculate that number.

"We just don't maintain records that combine all of the different types of liabilities -- personal-injury claims, labor claims, construction claims," Hoffman said.

The district contracts with other law firms when in-house lawyers would have a conflict of interest or, sometimes, when cases simply become too time-consuming. About 85 percent of cases are handled in-house.

Lawsuits against the school district vary widely.

In one recent count, about 45 percent were personal-injury cases. Roughly 10 percent were lawsuits brought by school-district employees against their bosses. Another 12 percent involve construction disputes.

A sampling:

* A father who tripped in the dark during a McDoniel Elementary School "Western Night" event in October 1995 hurt his hand. He sued the district, seeking $20,000 for "pain, suffering, mental distress, anguish and fears." A judge, however, dismissed the case in July.

* Fed up with her crowded classroom, Burkholder Middle School teacher Kelly Verna called the Henderson Fire Department in January 1995. Fire officials cited the school for the fire hazard. In her suit, Verna said district officials then began retaliating against her, socking her with reprimands, suspensions and two attempts to fire her. She sued for $3 million for suffering "severe, extreme emotional distress." The case is pending.

* An 8-year-old elementary school girl with mental disabilities pulled a cup of coffee from a table onto herself in May 1994. The mother alleges that the school should have taken the girl, who had several first- and second-degree burns on the stomach and shoulder, to the hospital. Instead, the school nurse treated the girl at the school with wet compresses. The mother is seeking $40,000. Lawyers are preparing for trial.

Another case filed last month involves teacher Carolyn Hoeger, one of several teachers who allege sexual harassment at school.

Hoeger says her principal made sexually charged comments to her and placed his hand on her knee. She said she resigned in distress and now the district refuses to rehire her. She is suing to get her job back.

"I was embarrassed. I felt degraded," Hoeger said in an interview. "I felt as though my position there was being undermined by his behavior toward women."

Among the oldest and most costly cases -- $464,152 at last count -- is one involving O'Callaghan Middle School teacher Muin Mustafa. His original complaint dates to 1994, when he was suspended without pay as officials investigated charges that he molested a Clark High School student. The charges were later dropped.

But the legal wrangling wasn't over. Mustafa later showed district officials a medical opinion stating that he suffered from depression, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Mustafa eventually argued that his mental state was so bad that he should be allowed to take a nonteaching job with the school district.

The district refused.

So Mustafa filed a lawsuit alleging that the district had violated his rights under the Rehabilitation Act.

Mustafa, a Palestinian, also alleged discrimination. Mustafa in 1994 had traveled to the Middle East, where he had hurt his foot. According to court records, a school official allegedly uttered that "maybe a camel stepped on his foot."

A U.S. district judge dismissed the case. But Las Vegas attorney Richard Segerblom helped Mustafa win an appeal last month. Now the matter may go to court as early as spring.

Three private law firms have helped the district defend the Mustafa case. Segerblom at one point offered to settle for $10,000.

"It's insane to waste taxpayers' money this way," Segerblom said. "The district doesn't have a mechanism to independently analyze the validity of claims. All they have is 'protect our ass,' using our (taxpayer) money."

But school officials see things much differently. In the Mustafa case, district officials initially wanted to protect their ability to dismiss teachers believed dangerous to students.

In general, district lawyers believe they have a responsibility to defend cases in which plaintiffs come after the school district simply because the district has deep pockets.

Sometimes, that means defending frivolous cases that may cost more to defend than settle.

"There are a lot of people out there who want to hit the litigation jackpot," Hoffman said. "And we won't play."

Hoffman said the district will quickly settle cases in which the district was clearly at fault instead of sinking money into costly litigation.

"We don't just tee everything up," Hoffman said. "But there are cases where we absolutely dig in because we believe we are right and there is too much money at stake to settle."

Other governmental bodies have similar philosophies.

Clark County last fiscal year handled 317 claims of wrongdoing by the county. But the county dealt with only 37 lawsuits, paying out $1.8 million in lawyer fees and lawsuit and settlement awards.

The county, like the school district, uses a private company of adjusters who investigate claims and make recommendations about who is liable.

"We're not shy to step up to the plate when we have some responsibility," said Robert Mulroy, director of risk management and safety for Clark County. "We say: 'How can we make this right?' But if they go overboard, we back up. We try to protect the taxpayers' money."

Several lawyers who have sued the school district say the district generally seems to act in the taxpayers' best interest.

Las Vegas attorney J.D. Evans this spring won a case for two clients who were injured in a dunk tank at a school carnival.

A private citizen owned the tank. But Evans argued that the district did not check the tank for safety or shut it down after one person got hurt.

The district's tab for the injuries: $15,999.78.

"I think the case should have been settled quicker than it was," Evans said. "But I could see a legitimate basis for the county (school district) litigating that file."

Las Vegas attorney John Shook this year won $30,000 from the district for a client whose jaw was shattered at a 1994 rap concert at Valley High School. The event, which had little to no security, turned into a shooting melee.

"Someone was going to get nailed," Shook said. "It was just a matter of who looks worse."

Controversy arose over who should have provided security -- the district or the concert promoter, The Truce Foundation. School police said they didn't show up because Truce couldn't afford them.

A small unit of security hired by Truce left the concert when things started to get nasty, Shook said.

Shook said the Truce Foundation bore most of the responsibility. But the poorly funded organization had no money or insurance.

So was it fair that the district paid more than Truce?

"Well, no," Shook said. "But one of the main things that leaves the school district at fault is that they didn't check their (Truce) insurance policy. When things broke down, the school police were negligent at least in not canceling the event or notifying (the district) there was something going on and that they were not going to be a part of it."

Lawyers for the school district say they probably will continue to see an increase in lawsuits that hit their desks, with cases varying from wrongful-death suits to whiplash complaints.

"We find ourselves trying to do the right thing and we often get sued anyway," Hoffman said. "We handle very serious cases and we handle very frivolous cases. We try to protect the taxpayers' money as well as we can."

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