The parents of 12-year-old Mallory Grossman filed a lawsuit earlier this week against the Rockaway Township Board of Education a year after Mallory’s suicide. According to the suit, Mallory was “tormented, for months, by texts, Instagram posts and Snapchat messages from classmates.” Bullies even allegedly asked her when she was going to kill herself. Tragically, on “June 14, 2017, she did.”
The parents of 12-year-old Mallory Grossman filed a lawsuit earlier this week against the Rockaway Township Board of Education a year after Mallory’s suicide. According to the suit, Mallory was “tormented, for months, by texts, Instagram posts and Snapchat messages from classmates.” Bullies even allegedly asked her when she was going to kill herself. Tragically, on “June 14, 2017, she did.”
The couple decided to file the lawsuit because they believe “Copeland Middle School failed to take any significant action regarding the bullying despite the family’s repeated complaints.” Additionally, they allege “the township failed in its responsibility to ensure the safety of children in local schools.” On top of that, the family also argues in the suit that the “school failed to implement policies to comply with the state’s anti-bullying statute and that officials advised them not to file a formal complaint under the law.”
In addition to the Rockaway Township Board of Education, the suit also names many “school personnel as individual defendants.”
Prior to their daughter’s death, her parents, Dianne and Seth Grossman pleaded with the school to step in and do something about the bullying. Instead of doing anything substantial, the lawsuit claims “school officials suggested Mallory eat lunch in a guidance office instead of the lunchroom to avoid her harassers, whom she was forced to hug in an apparent attempt at reconciliation.” The menial attempts on behalf of the school to remedy the situation weren’t enough and the bullying continued and ended with Mallory taking her own life to escape it.
When commenting on the lawsuit, the couple’s attorney, Bruce Nagel said, “The school had a very basic obligation: to keep (its) young students safe.” He also added that he thinks the Grossman’s lawsuit is the “first filed in response to a cyber-bullying suicide in New Jersey.” Nagel is an attorney for Nagel Rice in Roseland and is a well-known, high-profile civil litigator who has experience “securing multimillion-dollar jury awards and settlements.”
What about the families of the children who bullied Mallory? Do the Grossman’s plan on including them in the lawsuit? Well, while addresses reporters shortly after the Grossman’s filed their lawsuit, Nagel said, “At this stage, we have not brought a lawsuit against the four families whose children bullied Mallory.” However, he did add that the four families have “been put on notice for possible legal action.”
So far an attorney for the Rockaway Township School Board has declined to comment on the pending litigation. The superintendent for the school district, Greg McGann, also has yet to comment. McGann is named as one of the individual defendants in the lawsuit.
Sources:
School forced 12-year-old who killed herself to hug bullies, lawsuit says
Lawsuit: School officials forced 12-year-old who killed herself to hug bullies
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