Capistrano Unified Seeks to Recover Court Costs From Dead Boy’s Family

It was almost two years ago that Thomas and Barbara Lanni suffered a parent’s worst horror: Their 7-year-old son, Thomas Edward, was killed on his way home from school.

They had been living in California less than a week, having moved here from Long Island, N.Y. Tommy was a first-grader taking the bus home from Marian Bergeson Elementary School for the first time.

Moments after leaving the vehicle, he attempted to cross Aliso Niguel Road but was struck by a pickup truck and killed.

Since then, his parents say, their ongoing nightmare has magnified in intensity, complexity and bitterness. The couple sued the Capistrano Unified School District and lost. And now the district is seeking to recover $20,000 in court costs from the parents, who believe the bus driver and his superiors were negligent in causing their son’s death.

District Superintendent James A. Fleming said Friday that the recovery effort is standard procedure. By virtue of a new state law, Fleming said, courts must automatically compensate the winning party for expert-witness and deposition fees.

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By a 9-to-3 vote, an Orange County Superior Court jury ruled in favor of the district in January. But with the Lannis pledging to appeal the case to the highest court possible--one appellate ruling has gone against them already--the emotion on both sides has never been more volatile.

“For two years, we have listened to ourselves being vilified and accused of killing this child,” Fleming said. “This case was heard by a jury for a period of two weeks, and at the end of that time, we knew what the outcome would be: That we would be found completely innocent.”

Although they sued for $10 million, the Lannis say the case is not about money. Rather, they hope to have implemented a series of safety measures, believing that their son would still be alive had they been in place at the time.

Before the case was tried, they rejected a $300,000 settlement offer. Now the couple say they will be forced to declare bankruptcy if forced to pay $20,000 in court costs, which do not include the district’s estimated $100,000 in legal fees.

Thomas Lanni, an electrical engineer, said the family has spent almost $100,000 in attorneys’ fees, private-school tuition for his 7-year-old daughter--whom he refuses to send to the district’s schools--and psychotherapy for his wife, who continues to have trouble coping.

Some of his son’s $45,000 in emergency medical expenses also remain unpaid.

“My child is dead, but it’s had no impact on the way they do things,” he said. The parties agree on at least this much: Tommy boarded the bus on the morning of April 22, 1994. His mother presented the driver a check for $54 to cover Tommy’s bus fees and asked him to keep an eye on her son during the drive home.

About 3 p.m., the driver dropped Tommy off at the wrong stop, although it closely resembled the Lannis’ new neighborhood about one-quarter of a mile away. Tommy was struck while crossing the street.

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District officials say he bolted from the bus and ran. But Lanni vehemently disagrees, saying that other children on the bus testified that just the opposite was true, that Tommy exited the bus and walked, even slowly--albeit into traffic.

Thomas Lanni said that, even if his son had crossed the street safely, he would have been lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood, with his mother nowhere in sight. The driver apparently mistook an area of virtually identical condominium complexes as Tommy’s neighborhood. But the Lannis’ chief objection has to do with procedures that they believe the district is “egregiously irresponsible” in failing to implement.

The driver failed to exit the vehicle and walk Tommy and other children across the street, which the Lannis claim he should have done by virtue of state law. Don H. Zell, the district’s lawyer, contended that Tommy exited the bus hurriedly and that the driver couldn’t stop him before he crossed.

The Lannis also contend that the driver should have flashed the vehicle’s warning lights to slow oncoming traffic. They concede the driver was under no obligation to do so but believe the warning lights might have prevented the accident.

Fleming, the district’s superintendent, is adamant in opposing this point, saying in a statement released Friday, “A school bus driver absolutely may NOT use flashing lights to stop traffic except under carefully enumerated conditions subject to the review and approval of other government agencies.”

Lanni said that, at this point, he would be satisfied with payment for his legal costs; his daughter’s tuition; his wife’s mental-health expenses; and his son’s emergency-room costs, in addition to having a series of safety measures “with teeth” enacted by the district.

He said drivers should be required to escort children across the street and always flash warning lights, if only as a precaution. But more important, he said, is to improve the “chain of custody” between the district and its students, to prevent similar occurrences.

At the moment, Lanni said, a parent hindered in picking up a child en route from school can only hope nothing happens before he or she arrives at the bus stop.

“Federal Express takes better care of its packages than the Capistrano school district does of its children,” Lanni said. “All the district cares about is keeping everything under budget.”

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Zell said that even expert witnesses called by the Lannis agreed that the district’s procedures are not in violation of state law and that ferrying students to and from school is often a matter of impeccable timing and coordination--one which “impractical” safety measures would only hinder.

Many of Thomas Lanni’s suggestions, he said, would be far too costly.

“This whole case is reflective of the emotional unrest they’re in,” Zell said. “They need to get by the death of their son, and our court system is not the way to do it.”