Court Dismisses Lawsuit Against School District Over School Shooting

A Pierce County Superior Court judge in Washington has granted complete summary judgment in favor of the Tacoma Public Schools in a lawsuit resulting from a fatal student-on-student shooting at Foss High School in 2007. Patterson Buchanan convinced the court to dismiss the plaintiffs’ negligence claim, which asserted that the school district had a duty to control the shooter and to protect the murdered student.

The shooter, Douglas Chanthabouly, was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who is believed to have been delusional at the time of the shooting. He shot the victim on their first day back to school after a two-week winter break, before first period even had started. Before this, Chanthabouly had no history of any violent or assaultive behavior. Both the school’s principal and an assistant principal had passed by the scene of the shooting only moments before it occurred, and the school immediately went into lockdown. No other students were injured in the incident.

The victim's estate, parents, son, and siblings all filed a multitude of claims against the school district. Through a series of negotiations and motions, Patterson Buchanan's attorneys were able to obtain dismissal of the victim’s son and siblings as individual plaintiffs and to narrow the claims so that only negligence remained. In moving for summary judgment on this remaining claim, Patterson Buchanan focused on the fact that from the time of his diagnosis and treatment forward, Chanthabouly never exhibited any confrontational or violent behavior. Nor did his medical providers express any concern about his attendance at Foss. His act of shooting a schoolmate was not reasonably foreseeable, Patterson Buchanan argued, and thus did not fall within the duty the school district owed to the victim.

In making her ruling on December 16, 2011, the Honorable Linda CJ Lee agreed. While she acknowledged that the shooting was a terrible tragedy, she noted that tragedy does not necessarily equate to legal liability. Because nothing in the record indicated that Chanthabouly had any propensity for violence, Judge Lee concluded that there was no outstanding factual issue to resolve at trial about whether there had been a foreseeable risk of harm.

Mike Patterson, Charles Leitch, and Sarah Heineman represented the Tacoma Public Schools in the case, Kok v. Tacoma School Dist. No. 10.