Cheektowaga-Sloan school district settles sex abuse lawsuit for $450,000, escapes damages in 2nd case
In one case, the district settled with a 56-year-old man who alleged being repeatedly abused by teacher
In the second case, a jury declined to award any monetary damages to a woman who alleged being molested by teacher
School districts sued over child sex abuse also battling in court with insurers
A
The lawsuit, filed in 2020, went to trial last fall. In its verdict, the jury agreed that the plaintiff had been sexually abused as a 10-year-old-girl at
The woman’s attorney,
The two resolved lawsuits are the only Child Victims Act cases against the
In the case that was settled, the man identified only as S.H. in court documents, accused Meloon of molesting him multiple times, including inside a classroom at
S.H. alleged the abuse started when he was in seventh grade in 1980, with Meloon fondling him in a car after a
S.H. said he didn’t reveal the abuse to anyone, but he told four teachers and a principal that Meloon regularly took him to hockey games.
Meloon’s personnel filed showed no complaints against him and “only praise” for his work as a teacher and adviser for the school newspaper, court papers said. The district’s attorneys argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because district officials had no notice of the alleged abuse of S.H. or of any alleged propensity for Meloon to abuse students.
The district’s motion to dismiss the case was still pending when a deal was reached in May, whereby two district insurers agreed to pay
The district provided
Allianz Resolution Management paid
Ken-Ton to pay
The Kenmore-Town of
But the district was able to escape the kind of large settlement bill that has forced some other districts in the region to borrow money.
In the
The plaintiff testified that Horni was alone with her after school when he showed her a textbook that depicted naked men and women and then molested her, according to court papers.
The plaintiff did not tell anyone about the abuse. The district later learned that three other girls in the plaintiff’s class accused Horni of molesting them.
In a meeting on
The superintendent sent a letter the same day to the state education commissioner, explaining that Horni submitted his resignation and promised to seek psychiatric help.
“Please advise me of any further action that is necessary on the part of the school district as well as action that you may be contemplating,” Gizinski wrote in the letter to Commissioner
In his sworn statement on
To bolster his case that the district knew or should have known that Horni was an abuser, Chiacchia called an expert witness who testified that, even in the 1970s, there should have been notations in Horni’s personnel file of concerning classroom conduct that had been brought to the district’s attention by a sixth-grade girl and her mother.
The expert,
Ruling their testimony would have been “extremely prejudicial” against the district by engendering sympathy for the plaintiff, Furlong didn’t allow Chiacchia to call as witnesses any of the three women whose complaints about Horni in 1971 led to the teacher’s resignation.
Chiacchia said in an interview with The News that he believes the appeal will be successful.
“There was one evidentiary ruling we thought was critical to the case, and we feel that we have a fairly good chance of having that ruling reversed and getting a new trial,” he said.
___
(c)2024 The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.)
Visit The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.) at www.buffalonews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Lee County NFIP policyholders to receive warning letters from FEMA — but don’t worry just yet
Insurers object to order preventing lawsuits following Maui fires
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News