A California appeals court upheld a decision requiring a Los Angeles County school district to pay $1 million to a former student who was the victim of a months-long bullying campaign that included death threats.
On Friday, the El Segundo Unified School District in Los Angeles County lost its appeal against a 2022 court decision that found the district negligent in protecting Eleri Irons from “bullying, tormenting, and aggression.”
Irons, now 21, was a 13-year-old student at El Segundo Middle School when she was bullied from November 2017 to June 2018.
The school district’s appeal focused on several issues, including Irons’ failure to prove any of her injuries and the district’s refusal to accept responsibility for how employees handled the situation.
The school’s lawyers also cited a state government code that exempts public employees from all liability, according to Patch.
The 2019 lawsuit claimed that Irons “suffered PTSD, cut herself, and sought refuge in the school nurse’s office nearly every lunch break” as a result of the intense bullying.
The harassment began after Irons’ friendship with two other classmates dissolved due to a love triangle.
The two girls allegedly brought in a third teen as the bullying and torment escalated.
Irons was called a “liar, whore, cheater, and boyfriend-stealer,” flipped her off, mocked her in the hallways, and even slapped her in the face. “They screamed at her in person and harassed her online,” TODAY wrote.
The teen was the target of a months-long campaign of verbal harassment and cruel rumors that culminated in a petition titled “End the Life of Eleri Irons,” according to her ACTS Law attorneys.
“This ruling confirms what the jury already knew: Eleri was failed at every level by the very people who were supposed to protect her,” attorney Christa Ramey stated following the decision.
“Rather than accept responsibility and support this young woman’s recovery, the district chose to spend taxpayer money fighting her in court for years. That is not leadership. “That is cowardice.”
Ramey criticized the school district’s appeal for prolonging the case, forcing the young woman to relive “one of the most traumatic periods of her life.”
When teachers discovered the petition, school officials became aware of the cruel attacks, but they did not intervene.
Irons’ parents approached the school’s principal, who allegedly lied about calling police immediately after learning of the death threat in June 2018.
School officials were notified of Irons’ bullying by herself and her family, but they did not respond.
“Despite being aware of the threats, school officials failed to take meaningful action, failed to notify her parents, and failed to follow their own anti-bullying policies,” according to Irons’ lawyers.
Irons’ parents confronted the alleged bullying, but school officials dismissed the concerns “as drama over a teen love triangle,” Ramey told the Los Angeles Times in 2022.
A jury in Los Angeles determined that the school district failed to protect Irons from three bullies who led the campaign.
The three bullies were suspended for bullying.
The school district stated that it would “do the right thing” following the 2022 verdict. It has not publicly responded to the appeals court ruling.
Irons forgave her bullies in an interview in 2018.
“I forgive them,” Irons told Today. “I always wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt because I once valued our friendship. They did not receive the necessary intervention, either. “The school failed both me and them.”
