WHITE HOUSE, Tenn.- The Robertson County Board of Education has gone before the State Court to appeal a judgment in a bullying case.
In 2011, a judge ordered the district to pay Misty Phillips $300,000 after her son was struck in the eye with a textbook causing him to go blind in that eye. Phillips said she had tried to talk to the administrators at White House Heritage School about the bullying her son was experiencing, but her pleas for help went unanswered.
Phillips' son Jacob Gentry, now 20, suffered from Asperger's syndrome. In May 2006 when Jacob was in the 7th grade, his teacher left students alone in the classroom. That's when court documents explain, a student identified by the initials W.K. "swung a textbook backwards at Jacob striking him in the eye."
Phillips and her attorney said the incident was foreseeable, because she and her son's grandmother had complained about bullying more than 90 times.
"If you look at all the facts, Mr. Gentry's situation, the prior complaints of his mother you will see they definitely owned him a duty of care and they breached that duty," said the victim's attorney, Jonathon Street.
The school board disagreed.
"I think we can ask did the school take reasonable steps to try to deal with his problems. The answer to that is yes! They went through extensive efforts to try to deal with his particular problems, his social issues, his interaction with peer issues that arose with the autism and Asperger's syndrome," said Michael Mills with Robertson County Schools.
Both attorneys said it could take months before the justices come back with their opinion.
Past Stories
