CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that a student who claimed he was bullied for three years could proceed with his case on a negligence claim.
Dakota Jones alleged that his classmates severely bullied him while he was a student at Logan Middle School from 2012 to 2015, according to the Nov. 17 opinion.
Jones claimed other students cut him, choked him with a rope, punched him to the point of unconsciousness and stabbed him with a pencil and that school officials were aware of the bullying an did nothing to stop it, claiming that nothing could be done.
In 2019, Jones sued the Logan County Board of Education for negligence and in 2021, the circuit court concluded that he had not adequately pleaded the duty and causation elements of his negligence claim and dismissed his negligence and other claims.
"To the contrary, we find that Mr. Jones’s allegations — if taken as true and viewed in the light most favorable to him — are sufficient to permit the inference that the duty and proximate cause elements of a claim for negligence exist," Justice Beth Walker wrote in the majority opinion. "For that reason, that portion of the circuit court’s order dismissing Mr. Jones’s claim for negligence against the Board is reversed and this case is remanded for further proceedings."
Justices Tim Armstead and Haley Bunn dissented and authored their own opinion.
When Jones was bullied throughout middle school, the incidents were reported to the principal, but nothing was done about it.
During Jones' eighth-grade year, he was punched by a student and knocked unconscious, according to the opinion. The school nurse called Jones' mother, who came to the school with her niece to speak with the principal.
"The women met with Principal Sutherland. When asked what could be done about the bullying, Principal Sutherland allegedly responded that 'bullying goes on everywhere,' and that there 'aren’t really any laws on bullying,'" the opinion states.
Jones filed his case in Kanawha Circuit Court in 2019 and the school board sought to have the case dismissed. On Feb. 10, 2021, the court granted the motion to dismiss. Jones then appealed to the Supreme Court.
"Upon a close review of Mr. Jones’s complaint, we conclude that it contains specific allegations that permit the inference that the proximate cause element of his negligence claim exists," Walker wrote in the opinion. "As previously stated, Mr. Jones alleges that at least one employee of the Board, Principal Sutherland, knew that Mr. Jones was being bullied since December 2012."
Walker wrote that the alleged malicious acts of Jones’s fellow students do not cut off the board’s liability and that a reasonable juror could conclude that it was reasonably foreseeable to at least one board employee, Principal Sutherland, that Jones’ classmates would continue to bully and physically injure him.
"For that reason, and in view of the specific allegations contained in Mr. Jones’s complaint, we conclude that the circuit court erred when it found that Mr. Jones has failed to state a claim for negligence against the Board for which relief could be granted," Walker wrote.
In their dissenting opinion, authored by Armstead, the dissenting justices disagreed with the majority's findings, citing that the petitioners did not assign error to the dismissal of four of their five claims and narrowed the focus of their appeal to the negligence claim.
Armstead and Bunn believe that the circuit court was correct in dismissing the negligence claim and that the board is not liable to Jones if the unforeseeable intervening acts of the bullies caused Jones’s injuries.
West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals case number: 21-0217