(The Center Square) – The Michigan Court of Appeals has affirmed the ruling of a lower court that staff who worked for Oxford Community Schools are not responsible for the injury of a student during the 2021 school shooting at Oxford High School.
The ruling on the appeal sought by Jarrod and Linda Watson, the parents of Oxford student Aiden Watson, centered on whether Oxford school staff could be blamed for Aiden’s injury he received during the school shooting. The appellate court ruled Thursday that school staff were not the “proximate” cause of Watson’s injuries.
The court’s ruling said that, ultimately, the school shooter “was the person who decided to take a gun to school, shoot [Aiden Watson] in the leg and cause associated harm to Linda and Jarrod.”
Watson’s appeal centered on Michigan’s Governmental Tort Liability Act (GTLA) and whether Oxford school staff, technically government employees, were a “proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries in this case.”
The family of the student alleged that the school staff was negligent because teachers and administrators did not check the shooter’s backpack for a weapon or send him home, even after uncovering information revealing his mental health issues.
The court rejected those arguments, saying the case the family cited to make that argument did not apply and that the shooter was the direct cause of Watson’s injury.
The court noted that the shooter said under oath that “he made the decision to conduct the school shooting and shot [Watson] with the intent to kill him” and that while some school staff members “had some signs” the shooter “might be a danger to himself or others … it is simply outside the realm of possibility that a reasonable juror could conclude anyone but [the shooter] was ‘the one most immediate, efficient, and direct cause, of the [plaintiffs’] injuries.’”
The Watson family also argued in the appeal that district staff should have reported the school shooter to child protective services. Teachers, counselors and school administrators are obligated by Michigan’s Child Protection Law to serve as mandated reporters concerning abuse and neglect.
But the state Court of Appeals said Michigan’s tort liability act provides immunity to government employees and supersedes the liability imposed by the mandatory reporter law. Furthermore, the court said the Child Protection Law gives children the opportunity to sue mandatory reporters for failing to report abuse or neglect, which would not apply in this case.
At a sentencing hearing for the shooter in December, Linda Watson told the shooter that her family’s lives had changed forever when Aiden was shot and that doctors said the pain from his injury was “as good as it’s going to get.”
Watson said she and other victim’s parents “went through hell together” during and after the shooting as they spent time together in the hospital, Chalkboard reported at the time.
“We will move on. He will not,” Watson said during the hearing. “There’s no sentence that can make the shooter feel what my family has felt and will feel.”
