The North Carolina Court of Appeals has upheld a 2023 ruling in Alamance County superior court that dismissed a lawsuit filed against the Alamance-Burlington school board after an unlicensed teacher allegedly assaulted a student at Broadview Middle School nearly two years ago.
A visiting special superior court judge, Michael L. Robinson, a special judge for complex business cases for the North Carolina 4th Superior Court division, granted a motion dismissing the suit in April 2023, Alamance County superior court files show.
Both Robinson agreed last year, and the Appeals Court this week, that the school board had not waived its right of immunity through the purchase of liability insurance.
The lawsuit was filed in January 2023 by Deborah Claggett of 2015 Landon Court, Burlington, who was described in the complaint as the maternal grandmother and guardian-ad-litem of the student, “K.H.,” then 14. (Claggett appears to have passed away on March 10 of this year, based on an obituary published at the time.)
The suit alleged that K.H. had been assaulted by an “unlicensed teacher” when she went into her classroom to retrieve her bookbag but gave no indication whether K.H. had been in the classroom or why she had left.
Both the original suit and the factual background outlined in the opinion issued Tuesday by the Appeals Court described other students has having been inside the classroom during the alleged assault and noted that two other teachers came to the room when they “heard the commotion from the attack.”
The now-former Broadview Middle School teacher who allegedly attacked K.H., and was subsequently named as a defendant to the lawsuit, was identified in court documents as Danielle Dixon of 3801 Fig Leaf Court in Greensboro. Dixon had been hired as a language arts teacher at Broadview on September 13, 2022 on a contract that was to have run through June 2023, but she was terminated on June 10, 2023, based on semi-monthly personnel reports that school board members approved at the time.
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The plaintiffs had sought more than $25,000 under each of multiple alleged claims for relief, including: assault and battery; negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress; negligent hiring, retention, and supervision of Dixon by the school board; and multiple violations of K.H.’s right to a sound, basic education provided under North Carolina’s Constitution.
Claggett and the minor student, K.H., contended that: Dixon had been working with an expired teacher’s license; ABSS had failed to properly investigate the status of her licensure prior to hiring her to teach at Broadview Middle School; and that ABSS failed to properly supervise, train, and discipline “previous behaviors that Dixon was predisposed to commit and/or was committing the type of acts alleged,” according to the case background that Appeals Court judge Hunter Murphy outlined in his partial dissent, also issued Tuesday.
In their suit, the plaintiffs alleged that K.H. had “attempted to walk into her assigned classroom to retrieve her bookbag, when Dixon blocked her path with her arm,” grabbed K.H., “pulled her inside the classroom while closing the door,” yanked her hair, “and slammed the minor plaintiff into the door with enough force to break a broom that was located between the wall and door area,” according to the original complaint filed in Alamance County superior court, which included six still photos taken from video recorded during the incident.
“Dixon then grabbed [K.H.] by the hair on the back of her head and forcefully slammed [the] minor plaintiff to the ground…no less than five times,” according to the original suit. K.H. was later transferred to Ray Street Academy following the alleged assault by Dixon.
On appeal, the plaintiffs unsuccessfully argued that Robinson, the visiting special judge, had erred in dismissing the lawsuit “under the theory of sovereign immunity because a school board trust is a de facto insurance policy.”
The Court of Appeals disagreed that the school board had waived its right of immunity through its participation in the North Carolina School Boards Trust (NCSBT).
The NCSBT provides “risk management” services and protection to school boards through three funds: Errors & Omissions/General Liability, Automobile/Inland Marine, and Workers’ Compensation, according to the N.C. School Boards Association, which administers the program.
In her opinion for the Appeals Court, judge Carolyn Thompson wrote, “As a general rule, the doctrine of governmental or sovereign immunity bars actions against the state, its counties, and its public officials sued in their official capacity.”
Thompson concluded that the plaintiffs had failed to show that the school board had waived its governmental immunity through the purchase of insurance through a licensed, commercial insurer “or a qualified insurer as determined by the Department of Insurance.”
Appeals Court majority finds no violation of right to sound basic education
The plaintiffs also unsuccessfully argued on appeal that Robinson had erred in granting the motion to dismiss the school board as a defendant, under their alleged claim that negligent hiring and supervision of Dixon had violated K.H.’s state constitutional right to a sound, basic education.
The plaintiffs contended that the school board “violated her constitutional rights to education by failing ‘to provide an environment free of physical abuse, verbal abuse, harassment, and hostility,’ and ‘failed to provide a safe learning environment for learning to take place,’” Thompson recounted in her opinion for the Appeals Court.
The original suit and subsequent appeal further claimed that K.H. had “suffered educational consequences” and her “academic performance was placed in peril when she was physically abused by a teacher of the defendant [school board” and “forced to move schools without her input,” according to the case background.
The Appeals Court, however, found no correlation between those allegations and a 2021 ruling by the N.C. Supreme Court, which allowed a lawsuit against the State Board of Education and Pitt County school board to proceed on a claim that “deliberate indifference to ongoing harassment” had created a hostile learning environment which violated the state constitutional right to a sound, basic education.
In her opinion for the Appeals Court, Thompson wrote, “Here, [the] plaintiff’s complaint is entirely devoid of any allegation that would suggest [K.H.] was subjected to repeated or ongoing issues with Dixon.
“Despite plaintiff’s allegation that ‘Dixon had multiple issues within her classroom with other students and disciplinary actions by the principal,’” Thompson wrote, “[the] complaint is entirely predicated on the singular attack by Dixon on [November 2, 2022]. Furthermore, it is unclear from the complaint what the ‘multiple issues within Dixon’s classroom’ were; instead, this is a vague statement that does not illustrate what impact these ‘multiple issues with other students’ had on K.H.’s ability to receive an education.”
Judges John Arrowood and Hunter Murphy concurred with Thompson’s opinion for the Court of Appeals, though Murphy authored a partial dissent.
Dissent: Plaintiff should be allowed to proceed under constitutional claim
Murphy agreed with Appeals Court majority that the claims for monetary damages against ABSS are, in fact, barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, but concluded that K.H. should be allowed to proceed under the alleged violation of her state constitutional rights, writing that the allegations “are clearly sufficient to support an alleged violation of [the right] to an opportunity to receive a sound basic education in our public schools.”
Pointing to a 1992 ruling by the N.C. Supreme Court which he said had “created a common law cause of action” intended to ensure that every right has a remedy in the court system, Murphy wrote, “Sovereign immunity is no defense” to a valid claim of a violation of a particular constitutional right.
In his dissent, Murphy pointed out that the defendant school board “hired and retained Dixon, who did not have a teaching license at any time during the events giving rise to this action, to teach and supervise students in the inadequately staffed school” that K.H. attended. He also noted, as the suit had alleged, that the school board “failed to follow up on Dixon’s teaching license status and allowed Dixon to teach without a proper state licensure.”
Murphy also outlined a litany of allegations by the plaintiffs, apparently intended to show that the school board had failed to properly “train, supervise, hire, train, and discipline Dixon” and the board’s “deliberate indifference” to the consequences of Dixon’s actions.
“Taken as true,” Murphy wrote in his dissent, “[the defendant school board] was deliberately indifferent to the hostile environment it created when it placed an individual with no teaching license in a position of authority to instruct academic classes and to supervise children in its public school; failed to adequately staff that school; failed to investigate, train, assess, or ensure that Dixon had the requisite academic, emotional, and social qualifications to teach, supervise, and care for students in that school; and failed to take action when Dixon’s concerning behaviors first arose.”
“A sound basic education is not just one that is free from continual intimidation and harassment which prevent a student from learning,” Murphy wrote, citing the N.C. Supreme Court ruling in Deminski v. the State Board of Education and the Pitt County Board of Education. “The aggregate of [the] plaintiff’s allegations…are sufficient to support an alleged violation of [the] right to an opportunity to receive a sound basic education in our public schools protected by our State Constitution.”
Graham attorney Jeff McMillion represented the plaintiffs for their original suit and their appeal.
David B. Noland of the Tharrington Smith law firm in Raleigh represented the school board.
