Student Informant Seeks Help With Fees

A lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenage girl in Lancaster raises an unusual legal question: When a student helps a school investigate threats, who pays if the young informant is sued?

The attorney for Stephen and Kimberly Tapia, the girl’s parents, said they are stuck with a $40,000 legal bill because their daughter did what school officials have been urging students to do since the 1999 Columbine massacre: Tell authorities if they see or hear anything suspicious.

“If you’re going to rely on your students to be your eyes and ears for safety, then you have an obligation to stand behind them when they get sued and defend them,” said Scott Schutz, their attorney.

Kristina Tapia, a former Quartz Hill High School freshman, was sued last year by classmate David Belisle after she told school officials that he said, “We want to kill people; we’re sick of them,” and that he later threatened her for reporting his remarks. She reported the threats soon after the April 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

The boy was charged with making terrorist threats and intimidating a witness, and a juvenile court judge ordered him to serve six months’ probation. His expulsion from Quartz Hill was later overturned. In February 2000, David and his parents, Patrick and Tammy Belisle, sued Kristina, her parents, the Antelope Valley Union High School District and Los Angeles County alleging slander, invasion of privacy and false arrest.

The allegations against the boy made him “the object of ridicules, suspicion, hatred, disgrace and distrust all across the United States, let alone in his own community and school,” the suit contended.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carol Koppel dismissed the defamation complaint Jan. 26, agreeing with Schutz that the girl’s actions were protected by a California law that shields speech in the public interest.

Patrick Belisle declined to comment about the case and the attorney could not be reached.

Kristina, now 17, and her family still face the bill from Schutz, who charges $225 an hour. They have sued the Antelope Valley Union High School District and Los Angeles County to recoup the cost of her defense.

The Antelope Valley district is awaiting advice from its insurance carrier on how to proceed, said General Counsel Bridget Cook. Its options include challenging the girl’s claim in court or settling with her. Cook called the initial defamation lawsuit “frivolous” and said it should not have taken almost a year before it was dismissed.

“A pupil who cooperates as part of their responsibility as a student on a campus . . . should be immune from this type of lawsuit,” Cook said. “A lawsuit of this type should not even be allowed to proceed.”

Nevertheless, the suit did proceed for 11 months, and the girl should not be responsible for the costs of her defense during that time, Schutz said.

“When the student they relied on [for the investigation] gets sued, they should stand up for them, just like it was the janitor or somebody else working at the school,” he said.

Not providing legal protection will only keep students’ lips tighter, said Terry Francke, general counsel for the California First Amendment Coalition.

“There’s a pretty obvious case to be made that if kids or their parents get the idea that pointing the finger at this threatening personality is going to get them a possible lawsuit, that you won’t have people erring on the side of caution,” Francke said. “If you want that cooperation, you’re going to have to shield it.”

He said he is not aware of any defamation cases similar to the Quartz Hill lawsuit. Nor is Dick Hamilton, who has represented school districts for two decades and is director of the Education Legal Alliance of the California School Board Assn.

In Hamilton’s view, schools do not have a responsibility to shield, or indemnify, students in such lawsuits. Students are simply not the same as employees, he said.

“There is no such relationship between a district and its students that requires that type of defense and indemnification,” Hamilton said.

Lacking any directly relevant legal precedent to resolve such cases in the courts, Schutz suggested that the Legislature take up the issue, with the thought that the filing of these unusual lawsuits will only increase as students become more vigilant about reporting threats of violence in their schools.

Last November in Ventura County, a former Hueneme High School student whose reports of another student’s threats led to that girl’s expulsion sued the Oxnard Union High School District for revealing her identity to the classmate. That case, in which the informant is seeking more than $25,000, is pending.