Boy’s Death Was Preventable, Jury Told

The death of a 13-year-old student, killed during a fistfight on a Palmdale school campus in 1999, could have been prevented with better adult supervision, an attorney for the boy’s mother argued in court Monday.

Attorney Melanie E. Lomax urged jurors in her closing argument to find that the Palmdale School District had been negligent in the wrongful death of Stephan Corson.

Lomax said a teacher at Juniper Intermediate School had failed to ensure Corson’s safety when she did not accompany students as they left her classroom. She asked the Van Nuys jury to award her client $1.5 million in compensatory damages plus $9,000 for the boy’s medical and funeral expenses.

Corson was killed Nov. 19, 1999, after he initiated a fistfight with another student outside the classroom and was knocked to the ground. He died of a spinal injury within an hour, Lomax said.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office investigated and, in 2000, declined to file criminal charges against the other student.

After her son’s death, Mary Corson sued the school district.

Martin L. Carpenter, an attorney for the district, called Corson’s death “tragic and unpredictable” but denied that the school district had been negligent. Another teacher had intervened to try to stop the fight but Corson had continued hitting his 14-year-old classmate, he said.

But if the school district is found to have been negligent, Carpenter urged jurors to consider a lesser monetary award, suggesting that $600,000 would be “a reasonable amount.” He urged jurors to find that Corson should bear half the responsibility for his own death.

Lomax conceded that the boy had begun the fight and was partly responsible, but she said he had less responsibility than the adults who had a duty to protect him. She asked the jury to find the school district 80% liable. Lomax described an “out of control” classroom in which the teacher had allowed her students to become loud and disruptive. Corson believed that the other boy had thrown paper at him and began the fight in retaliation, although the boy denied doing so, she said.

The teacher should have known the boys were planning to fight after school and tried to stop them, Lomax said.

The teacher also could have responded when the fight began outside her classroom, she said. A dozen or more students were gathered around, yelling as they watched the brawl.

“They were all out there, preparing for a blood sport,” Lomax said.

Without her youngest son, Mary Corson has stopped celebrating Christmas, Lomax said.

“He was the light of her life. He was the reason she got up in the morning and went to bed at night,” she said.

The jury is set to continue deliberating today in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard A. Adler.