Irvine school settlement is wholly unsettling

The trouble with settling a legal spat is that it usually turns out the lights on what really happened.

And we badly need the lights turned on in what has become a most peculiar case in the Irvine Unified School District. It’s one of those situations in which no scenario makes much sense to me, but something happened, and I’m having a hard time coming up with a harmless explanation.

The bottom line is that the district has settled a legal complaint filed by Thomas and Liya Lin, who said they felt pressured to provide school personnel with gifts as the price to ensure their severely autistic son got the help he needed.

We are not talking trinkets.

According to the filing in November, the largesse spanned the period between November 2004 and mid-2006 and included designer clothing, gift certificates to Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, jewelry, Louis Vuitton purses, and a condo for a teacher’s daughter and fiance to live in rent-free for a year.

The complaint, which probably would have become a lawsuit, says the amount in question exceeds $100,000.

The complaint alleged that the Lins thought they had to provide “increasingly lavish items so that the district would continue to provide necessary education services to their son.” It goes on to allege that the couple “believed [their son] would be neglected if they did not pay the district....”

In big-city politics, you’d call that a shakedown. When you factor in the vulnerabilities of parents with a special-needs child, you’d call it a pathetic shakedown.

But is that what happened?

My reaction: impossible. No way. How could self-respecting teachers or staff members run up such a tab and use the coercive threat of educating an autistic child as leverage?

The school district’s official position is that the Lins never were threatened. It acknowledges that the couple gave gifts to staffers but has “disputed from day one that there was any coercion,” according to a spokesman.

The legal challenge alleges otherwise, but the Lins subsequently dropped the claim regarding the gifts when settlement talks got serious. That, in essence, took the allegations off the table.

Then, this week, the district’s board of trustees agreed to pay an unspecified amount for the “education of the child” and attorney fees, the spokesman said. Because the fee involved a child’s educational needs, the amount wasn’t revealed, the spokesman said. He went on to say that the matter was closed and that no school district employees had been disciplined.

I think most of us see a gaping hole where information should be.

I’d think Irvine residents might want to know whether district employees pocketed an incredible array of gifts without ever thinking to tell the parents “Thanks, but no thanks.” If there was no coercion, I’d want an explanation as to why the gift-giving went on so long.

If it was just a failure to communicate, well, they’d better come up with a better explanation.

I asked spokesman Ian Hanigan if the district planned to provide the public with any kind of narrative as to how this bizarre set of events unfolded.

We can all understand parents offering a token of esteem like a Starbucks gift card to show gratitude for their child’s care. But free rent and shopping sprees?

Surely the district would like to explain how it all got so crazy as to end up in a legal fight?

Not really, Hanigan politely said.

I tried to reach the Lins’ attorney to ask if the legal claim was created from whole cloth, but I had the same luck as another reporter who tried him earlier this week: No luck at all.

So, we’re left to scratch our heads.

Would parents really feel the need to lavish such gifts on teachers? The complaint says that “because of their culture and upbringing, [the Lins] were accustomed to giving small gifts to those with whom they worked.”

Their son’s problems, however, convinced them they needed to up the ante, the complaint alleges. Mr. Lin is a physician and presumably could afford it.

Unless the Lins are rewriting history, would they continue giving gifts without expressing concern to the teachers?

And if the teachers’ motives were pure in accepting the items, wouldn’t they have made it clear that gifts weren’t required to educate the boy, identified as 7 years old when the claim was filed?

Forgetting for a moment the silent treatment that results from the settlement, wouldn’t the district fire any employee who engaged in such conduct?

Since it hasn’t even disciplined anyone, does that mean the district endorses the acceptance of gifts that valuable?

You see the problem we’re left with.

Did the Lins make up everything about feeling pressured to dispense the gifts?

Or did a group of staffers really string them along for nearly two years and somehow justify the gifts as gratitude, rather than insisting they stop coming?

Unless Irvine starts talking, the rest of us will have to keep guessing.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.