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| For updates, see San Diego Education Report Blog. |
| Deposition of Ray Artiano by the author of this website (with Dan Shinoff acting as Artiano's counsel) |
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| Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff & Holtz |
| Jeffery Morris smears teen who was assaulted by Poway music teacher Morris helps Patrick Judd avoid testifying in Maura Larkins v. CVESD. Morris assisted attorney Kelly Angell when she tricked the court and Maura Larkins to obtain a deposition date on which she knew Larkins would not be available |
| Coach Carter v. Escondido UHSD Case Stutz attorney Jeffery Morris was glad that Escondido Union High School District was not held liable in coach Carter case, in which whistle-blower coach was fired for reporting that student's kidney failure was caused by a fellow coach's recommendation that the boy take a substance. Why is Morris pleased? Because coaches can now freely recommend that students take substances that will cause their kidneys to fail? Maybe not. That schools can retaliate against whistleblowers? This is important to Morris and his law firm, Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz. That Morris was paid a lot of taxpayer dollars to protect a coach who harmed a student? My guess is that Morris is glad that he got $100,000s in this case, and the wrongly- fired coach got nothing. And that Morris doesn't care that he's making money every time he helps force out a good employee in order to keep mediocre (or worse) employees in positions of power in schools. Coach's $1.2 million jury award reversed District cannot be held liable in firing, court says By Greg Moran March 22, 2007 DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO – A $1.2 million jury verdict awarded to a fired Escondido Union High School District basketball coach was reversed by a San Diego appeals court yesterday. The 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that the verdict in favor of James “Ted” Carter had to be overturned because the district could not be held liable for firing him in 2002. Carter, the former boys basketball coach at Orange Glen High School, claimed his firing was mainly prompted by an earlier dispute he had at another high school in Spring Valley. Carter had told Monte Vista High School officials that Ed Carberry, then the football coach at the Spring Valley school, had urged a player to take a legal, weight-gaining nutritional supplement. No action was taken against the football coach. Carter then got a position at Orange Glen. But after he accepted, the school hired a new principal – Diana Carberry, Ed Carberry's wife. After two years at Orange Glen, Carter said he was fired, based in large part on Diana Carberry's recommendation to the school board. He contended his firing was largely retaliation for his report against Ed Carberry. In a 3-0 ruling written by Associate Justice Joan Irion, the appeals court said the verdict could not be upheld because under the law the school district could not be held liable. Carter contended his firing violated a section of the state education code that allows school personnel to administer medication to students with the permission of a doctor or their parents. Employees like Carter can't be fired if their termination violates public policy that is fundamental and well-established. In this case, Irion said that the education code section cited by Carter does not explicitly cover the legal, weight-gaining supplement that the football coach recommended. The education code covers “medication” prescribed by a doctor, and allows school personnel to assist a student in taking it. Irion wrote that nutritional supplements are not medication. In this instance it was not prescribed by a doctor. In fact, Carberry only “recommended” that the student take it, and the coach did not assist the student, Irion said. Therefore, she concluded, “the statute cannot form the basis for Carter's wrongful termination action.” Irion also said that Carter could not claim he was a whistle-blower and wrongly fired on that basis. “There may indeed be sound policy reasons to bar football coaches from recommending weight gaining substances to high school students, but as there is currently no law that does so, any such prohibition must be enacted explicitly by the Legislature, not implicitly by the courts,” she wrote. Jeffrey Morris, the lawyer for the Escondido school district, welcomed the decision. “The court agreed that the statute they relied upon (at trial) doesn't say what they claimed it said,” Morris said. “It's a good result for the district, and at the end of the day this is something that really should not have been allowed to go to trial.” Lawyers for Carter could not be reached for comment yesterday. Diana Carberry has since left Orange Glen, and her husband has left Monte Vista and is the head coach at Mt. San Jacinto College in Riverside. |
| Update on Donovan case: link Shinoff and Morris don't think schools should have to protect students Poway Unified School District appeals decision regarding former Poway High students Gay Lesbian Times by Anthony Baldman 07-Dec-2006 Lambda Legal and law firm Rosenstein Wilson & Dean filed a brief Nov. 21 urging an appeals court to uphold a jury decision that found former Poway High School students were subjected to relentless harassment due to their sexual orientation and that Poway Unified School District failed to take measures to stop the harassment in an immediate and appropriate way. Former students Joseph Ramelli and Megan Donovan were awarded $300,000 by a San Diego Superior Court on June 8, 2005. Following the jury’s decision, PUSD filed a motion for a new trial but was denied on Sept. 2, 2005. The school district then filed for a notice of appeal on Sept. 21, 2005. Jeffrey Morris, one of the attorneys with Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz representing PUSD, told the Gay & Lesbian Times the reason they’re appealing the case is because the court gave an instruction that “essentially held the district to guarantee a harassment- free environment.” The instruction, along with “other incorrect instructions,” allowed the jury to find the district responsible for this alleged harassment, Morris said. But Brian Chase, staff attorney for Lambda Legal, said all schools in California are required to take effective measures to achieve a harassment-free environment. “Even after their mothers complained about their kids being harassed because they are gay and lesbian, the school district did little to nothing to protect Joey or Megan, which is why the jury in the trial court ruled against the Poway Unified School District,” he said. Chase said he expects the case will reach the appeals court in the next four to five months. “First, [PUSD is] arguing that the jury was wrong in determining that the administrators had been deliberately indifferent to the harassment of Megan and Joey,” Chase said. “But of course that’s a question for the jury, not for the appellate court. They shouldn’t get the chance to retry it. They went to trial and they lost.” When the California Legislature passed laws protecting gay and lesbian students from harassment, PUSD argues the Legislature didn’t intend to give students in California more protection than those provided under federal law, Chase said. “So basically they’re arguing that the California Legislature went to all the trouble to pass these laws in order to do absolutely nothing that the federal government wasn’t already doing,” he said. “We’re arguing that, no, the California Legislature specifically said that schools have an affirmative duty to protect kids from harassment, and that’s what they meant. They meant to give more protection for the kids than they would get under federal law.” Ramelli and Donovan attended Poway High from 2000 to 2003. Both students spent their senior year studying in a home-schooling program called New Directions due to their negative experiences on campus. Donovan and Ramelli graduated the program in 2004. Bridget Wilson, an attorney representing the students, said they remain hopeful, though anything can happen during the appeal. “We believe very strongly in this case. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have taken it to trial,” she said. In April 2005, Ramelli testified in a San Diego Superior Court that he had been harassed and teased about his sexual orientation since he was a freshman. Students repeatedly called him names, threw food and spit on him, vandalized his car and shoved him in the hallways, he said. “I kept a log of the times when I was called ‘fag’ and other derogatory words, and when I was physically assaulted or my life was threatened,” Ramelli said. “Hardly a day went by that I didn’t get shoved or called a name, so there was no way that anyone could question that what was happening to me was a serious, constant problem. I don’t want future gay and lesbian students at Poway to suffer from the same harassment I went through.” Wilson said many of the abusive incidences were reported to school administrators, but they were unresponsive. Donovan and Ramelli were in fact blamed for [the incidences], and Ramelli was accused of overreacting to the abuse, she said. The students’ lawsuit also claimed Poway administrators had encouraged both students to leave the school to participate in the New Directions program, depriving them of a typical high school experience. Wilson said a panel of three appellate justices will be assigned to review the case. |
Donovan et al. v. Poway
Unified School District et al.
Case Number D047199
Future Scheduled Actions
Donovan et al. v. Poway
Unified School District et al.
Case Number D047199
Description
Supplemental brief filed
by: 04/14/2008 Per
court's letter dated
3/26/08
Party Attorney
Donovan, Megan :
Plaintiff-respondent-x/appellant
F. Brian Chase
Lambda Legal Fund
3325 Wilshire Blvd. Suite
1300
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Hayley Gorenberg
Lambda Legal Defense &
Education Fund, Inc.
120 Wall Street, Suite 1500
New York, NY 10005
Paula S. Rosenstein
Rosenstein, Wilson & Dean
1901 First Avenue, Ste. 300
San Diego, CA 92101
Ramelli, Joseph :
Plaintiff-respondent-x/appellant
F. Brian Chase
Lambda Legal Fund
3325 Wilshire Blvd. Suite
1300
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Hayley Gorenberg
Lambda Legal Defense &
Education Fund, Inc.
120 Wall Street, Suite 1500
New York, NY 10005
Paula S. Rosenstein
Rosenstein, Wilson & Dean
1901 First Avenue, Ste. 300
San Diego, CA 92101
Poway Unified School District :
Defendant-appellant-x/respondent
Jeffrey A. Morris
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff &
Holtz
2488 Historic Decatur Rd.,
#200
San Diego, CA 92106
George Edson Murphy
Murphy, Campbell, Guthrie
& Alliston
8801 Folsom Blvd., Ste. 230
Sacramento, CA 95826
Fisher, Scott :
Defendant-appellant-x/respondent
Jeffrey A. Morris
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff &
Holtz
2488 Historic Decatur Rd.,
#200
San Diego, CA 92106
George Edson Murphy
Murphy, Campbell, Guthrie
& Alliston
8801 Folsom Blvd., Ste. 230
Sacramento, CA 95826
Giles, Ed :
Defendant-appellant-x/respondent
Jeffrey A. Morris
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff &
Holtz
2488 Historic Decatur Rd.,
#200
San Diego, CA 92106
George Edson Murphy
Murphy, Campbell, Guthrie
& Alliston
8801 Folsom Blvd., Ste. 230
Sacramento, CA 95826
ACLU Foundation of San
Diego & Imperial Counties :
Other
P.O. Box 87131
San Diego, CA 92138
John David Blair-Loy
ACLU of San Diego &
Imperial Counties
P.O. Box 87131
San Diego, CA 92138
ACLU Foundation of
Northern California : Other
39 Drumm Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Alex M Cleghorn
39 Drumm Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
ACLU Foundation of
Southern California : Other
1616 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Natalie Nardecchia
ACLU Foundation of
Southern California
1616 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Education Legal Alliance
of the CA School Boards
Assoc. : Other
Kellie Marie Murphy
Johnson Schachter &
Lewis
2180 Harvard St Ste 560
Sacramento, CA
95815-3326
Lehoa Nguyen
2180 Harvard St #560
Sacramento, CA
95815-3326
Unified School District et al.
Case Number D047199
Future Scheduled Actions
Donovan et al. v. Poway
Unified School District et al.
Case Number D047199
Description
Supplemental brief filed
by: 04/14/2008 Per
court's letter dated
3/26/08
Party Attorney
Donovan, Megan :
Plaintiff-respondent-x/appellant
F. Brian Chase
Lambda Legal Fund
3325 Wilshire Blvd. Suite
1300
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Hayley Gorenberg
Lambda Legal Defense &
Education Fund, Inc.
120 Wall Street, Suite 1500
New York, NY 10005
Paula S. Rosenstein
Rosenstein, Wilson & Dean
1901 First Avenue, Ste. 300
San Diego, CA 92101
Ramelli, Joseph :
Plaintiff-respondent-x/appellant
F. Brian Chase
Lambda Legal Fund
3325 Wilshire Blvd. Suite
1300
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Hayley Gorenberg
Lambda Legal Defense &
Education Fund, Inc.
120 Wall Street, Suite 1500
New York, NY 10005
Paula S. Rosenstein
Rosenstein, Wilson & Dean
1901 First Avenue, Ste. 300
San Diego, CA 92101
Poway Unified School District :
Defendant-appellant-x/respondent
Jeffrey A. Morris
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff &
Holtz
2488 Historic Decatur Rd.,
#200
San Diego, CA 92106
George Edson Murphy
Murphy, Campbell, Guthrie
& Alliston
8801 Folsom Blvd., Ste. 230
Sacramento, CA 95826
Fisher, Scott :
Defendant-appellant-x/respondent
Jeffrey A. Morris
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff &
Holtz
2488 Historic Decatur Rd.,
#200
San Diego, CA 92106
George Edson Murphy
Murphy, Campbell, Guthrie
& Alliston
8801 Folsom Blvd., Ste. 230
Sacramento, CA 95826
Giles, Ed :
Defendant-appellant-x/respondent
Jeffrey A. Morris
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff &
Holtz
2488 Historic Decatur Rd.,
#200
San Diego, CA 92106
George Edson Murphy
Murphy, Campbell, Guthrie
& Alliston
8801 Folsom Blvd., Ste. 230
Sacramento, CA 95826
ACLU Foundation of San
Diego & Imperial Counties :
Other
P.O. Box 87131
San Diego, CA 92138
John David Blair-Loy
ACLU of San Diego &
Imperial Counties
P.O. Box 87131
San Diego, CA 92138
ACLU Foundation of
Northern California : Other
39 Drumm Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Alex M Cleghorn
39 Drumm Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
ACLU Foundation of
Southern California : Other
1616 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Natalie Nardecchia
ACLU Foundation of
Southern California
1616 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Education Legal Alliance
of the CA School Boards
Assoc. : Other
Kellie Marie Murphy
Johnson Schachter &
Lewis
2180 Harvard St Ste 560
Sacramento, CA
95815-3326
Lehoa Nguyen
2180 Harvard St #560
Sacramento, CA
95815-3326
| Attorney Jeffery Morris |
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