David Loy of ACLU says San Marcos school raising funds illegally

San Diego ACLU legal director David Loy objects to a religious organization involved in raising money in public schools in San Marcos Unified School District. (See story below.)

I share Mr. Loy's concern about the charity for two reasons.

First, I don't like a charity that has the goal of merely passing out meals in Africa, without addressing underlying economic problems.  I would urge citizens of San Marcos to give to Oxfam rather than this charity.

Oxfam teaches people how to fish rather than giving them a fish to eat.  They create better economic conditions, giving jobs to parents rather than meals to children.  They let the parents feed their own kids with the money they make.

The San Marcos charity simply serves meals to kids.

Well, actually, I suspect that's not all they do.  Which brings me to my second criticism: the violation of the First Amendment.

Second, I suspect that the charity is serving meals for a limited time because it wants to give religious training to kids.  After they're converted, the charity's goals have been achieved, and the feeding of the kids is no longer a priority.

I can understand that Mr. Loy would be worried about the slippery slopes that surround enterprises like this one, but if he's going to worry about the dangers of everyday activities that threaten the First Amendment, he should worry first about his own actions quashing free speech.  Why should he hold San Marcos Middle School to such an exacting standard when he is so lax about the First Amendment in other situations?

ACLU says San Marcos school raising funds illegally

By Pat Maio 

SDUT

Dec. 8, 2014

San Marcos Middle School may be breaking state law by raising money with a religious group to feed children in East Africa, according to the San Diego and Imperial counties chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The school is partnering with a local nonprofit called Friends and Family Community Connection, with the support of Illinois-based Kids Around the World, to raise $3,500 to provide 14,000 meals for children in Tanzania..


David Loy's interesting history regarding free speech and open government

 ACLU legal director David Loy didn't want the First Amendment to be enforced in an anti-free speech lawsuit against this website, perhaps because of loyalty to someone he worked with.  But I doubt that Mr. Loy was involved in an effort to deface a California Court of Appeal opinion on the website Leagle.com.  The Aug. 5, 2014 opinion, which stated that I am allowed by the Constitution to mention the names of attorneys who work for schools, was seriously defaced.  I sent the following message to Leagle.com on December 8, 2014:

Who defaced this decision?  This page was perfectly legible for several years after the 2011 decision.   On December 8, 2014, I find that a large amount of the decision has been overwritten, making it indecipherable.  Was this page hacked, or does Leagle.com want it to be largely unreadable?

10 minutes later Leagle.com had fixed the defaced Stutz v. Larkins page.

Here is part of the hacked Leagle.com page:

On December 8, 2014 I was reading David Loy's biography on the San Diego ACLU website, and I was struck by the irony of his claims to fame.  Freedom of speech?  Open government and public disclosure? 

David Loy was indeed chosen as a Top Attorney in 2009 and 2010, but I suspect the reason was NOT that he defended free speech, but that he crafted a couple of agreements with schools regarding student speech.

Those agreements generated some nice media attention for Mr. Loy.  But what was he doing behind the scenes?

He was pressuring me to remove the names of public entity attorneys from my website.  He wrote to me telling me that I must remove every mention of certain public attorneys he had worked with!

The Court of Appeal disagreed with Mr. Loy that I must remove those names.  See story in Voice of San Diego.

The Stutz v. Larkins decision on the Leagle website was largely unreadable for some time in 2014. It was fixed on Dec. 8, 2014.

Here's the decision that somebody didn't want you to see.  Clearly, David Loy didn't want this case to be heard by the Court of Appeal, so I assume he wasn't happy with the decision.

So how does David Loy get off claiming to be an expert in free speech and a champion of sunshine in government?  He most certainly is NOT a supporter of transparency in public entities, as shown by his efforts to silence public discussion of public attorneys.

Legal Director, David Loy
After graduating law school, Loy clerked for Judge Dolores K. Sloviter of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He worked as a staff attorney with Office of the Appellate Defender in New York City and public defender and civil rights attorney in Spokane, Washington before joining the ACLU in 2006. He previously served on the Southern District Lawyer Representative Committee and the board of California Appellate Defense Counsel. Loy was named one of San Diego’s Top Attorneys 2009 and 2010 by San Diego Daily Transcript. He supervises all legal advocacy at the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, and has particular expertise in freedom of speech and religion, open government and public disclosure, police misconduct, and constitutional criminal procedure. Loy has a law degree from Northwestern and a B.A. from Brown, and is licensed to practice in California and New York (with inactive licenses in Illinois and Washington).
--from ACLU website 

Suit says district liable for athlete's brain injury

The trial is scheduled to be webcast live on Courtroom View Network, a pay website that caters to attorneys and law schools across the country. A spokesman for the network said it chose the Eveland trial because it will feature “top-tier litigators and extensive expert witness testimony, which along with significant outside interest makes it a great candidate for electronic coverage.”

See also: Dan Shinoff's motion for gag order in Scott Eveland case is denied

Suit says district liable for athlete's brain injury
J. Harry Jones
Jan. 3, 2012
U-T

SAN MARCOS — On the second play of the second quarter of a high-school football game more than four years ago, Mission Hills High linebacker Scott Eveland limped off the field and collapsed on the sideline.

The 17-year-old’s life would be saved in surgery many hours later, but it would be a life greatly altered.

Now, a Vista Superior Court jury will be asked to determine why Eveland suffered a catastrophic brain injury that night in September 2007.

More to the point, they will be asked to decide if employees of the San Marcos Unified School District bear the brunt of responsibility.

Barring a last-minute settlement, the trial is scheduled to begin Friday and could last eight to 14 weeks. According to court documents, Eveland’s lawyers will ask the jury for roughly $25 million, which is what they say is needed to provide the expensive, 24-hour-a-day care Eveland will need the rest of his life.

Eveland suffered a subdural hematoma — bleeding in the brain. His mind is active, but his is body crippled. He can type out responses to some questions on a keyboard but can barely speak. He’s made some progress physically, but his mobility is very limited.

“He’s going to be severely disabled for the rest of his life,” said his mother, Diane Luth. “But you know what? That kid is motivated. He’s working hard. … He’s doing what he can to get the connection back. He hasn’t given up.”

Eveland will be brought into court in a wheelchair during the trial but will not testify, his attorney said.

Football head injuries have become a hot legal and health topic nationwide in the past few years, with far more attention being paid to signs of concussion because of the long-term effects such incidents can cause.

The trial is scheduled to be webcast live on Courtroom View Network, a pay website that caters to attorneys and law schools across the country. A spokesman for the network said it chose the Eveland trial because it will feature “top-tier litigators and extensive expert witness testimony, which along with significant outside interest makes it a great candidate for electronic coverage.”

Eveland’s lawyers maintain that during the days before the game, Eveland was experiencing worsening headaches. Just minutes before the game, they will argue, Eveland went to the team’s athletic trainer and told him his headache was so bad, his eyes couldn’t focus. They will say that he asked to be held out of the game for at least the first quarter and that the trainer, Scott Gommel, then went to Coach Chris Hauser with the information.

According to one witness, who was a student trainer at the time, Hauser was overheard telling Gommel “You aren’t a (expletive) doctor,” and something to the effect of “These are my players, and I’ll decide who plays and who doesn’t.”

Eveland started the game. Two other young witnesses are expected to testify that in the days after Eveland collapsed, Gommel told them that he had gone to Hauser and told him of Eveland’s health complaints but that the coach put Eveland in the game anyway.

San Marcos Unifed rejects wrestler's claim; Rick Rinear at SDCOE-JPA instructed them to do so

The San Diego County Office of Education instructs all school districts who buy its Joint Powers Authority insurance coverage to reject all claims.

See Logan Jenkins on why this type of case needs to go before a jury.
See all San Marcos Unified posts.

Prep wrestler sues opponent over body slams
By Brent Schrotenboer
SDUT
April 22, 2011

A Fallbrook High School wrestler has sued an opposing wrestler at Mission Hills High, claiming he was badly injured by body slams and other illegal moves during a wrestling match in January.

Shane Perine, a sophomore at Fallbrook, filed suit this month in San Diego Superior Court. He seeks unspecified damages against Mission Hills wrestler Devin Coley and the San Marcos Unified School District, which includes Mission Hills High.

Perine’s suit says that Coley’s illegal moves were “repeated by him over and over throughout the match" at Mission Hills on Jan. 27. It says that the referees and district employees who oversaw the match did nothing to stop it except award a point to Perine. What they should have done instead was stop the match, the suit says.

Coley “went off the chart, doing body slams and moves that are not only illegal but dangerous,” said Perine’s attorney, Paul Rolf Jensen. “We think this is important because it was called to the coach’s attention, and he ignored it. That’s a pretty significant problem.”

Jensen also said the incident was recorded on video.

Coley, Mission Hills coach David LaVine and San Marcos Superintendent Kevin Holt didn’t return messages seeking comment. The school district rejected the claim at its regular board meeting in March.

Jensen said his client has a spinal injury because of the incident and has undergone several MRI exams because of it. Jensen also said Perine can’t play sports anymore.

“It’s not crippling but painful,” Jensen said.

Perine also names the San Diego Section of the California Interscholastic Federation as a defendant in the suit. The section supervises the referees.

“If the jury found liability, which we expect, I think there would be general agreement the value of the case would be somewhere in the range of a quarter of a million dollars,” Jensen said.

2nd witness says Scotty Eveland complained of headaches before collapse

See related case:
What happens when a coach tries to protect a student's health? the Coach James Ted Carter case

Sept. 2011: Attorney Dan Shinoff's request for gag order in Eveland case is denied

Kids are taught to do what coaches and teachers want without question.
Why? Because it's easier that way--for the adults. I think we'd have a
better-educated population if adults were willing to subject at least some of
their decisions to a critical-thinking process involving students. Sometimes adults are wrong, and there is no need for them to be ashamed of this fact. It's inevitable that adults will make mistakes.

What they should be ashamed of is covering up their mistakes and lying
about them. Of course school employees are told to keep quiet. Also,
school attorneys instruct witnesses not to answer questions during
depositions. I wonder how many times this happened during the 50
depositions in this case? It would be a lot easier for the courts to administer
justice if lawyers instructed their clients to tell the truth.

2nd witness says Scotty Eveland complained of headaches before collapse
By J. Harry Jones
SDUT
January 15, 2011

SAN MARCOS — A former student trainer has testified that a few days after Mission Hills High football player Scotty Eveland collapsed during a game in 2007, the school’s lead trainer confided that Eveland had asked to sit out because he was suffering from headaches and disorientation but was called in anyway by the head coach.

The account, given during a deposition completed Wednesday, corroborates testimony from another former student trainer who was deposed in October.

The San Marcos Unified School District has maintained that Eveland showed no sign of medical problems before the collapse. Scott Gommel, the lead trainer, said the same during his deposition four months ago. A judge has agreed to let lawyers for Eveland’s family redepose Gommel because of the new information.

Eveland has remained in a mostly vegetative state since his collapse. Doctors think he will need constant medical care that could cost millions of dollars over his lifetime.

Testimony from the two former student trainers is part of evidence collection in an ongoing lawsuit filed by Eveland’s family against the school district.

San Marcos Unified is confident it will “absolutely be vindicated” at trial, said Daniel Shinoff, a lawyer for the district. He also urged that facts be decided in a court of law and not in the court of public opinion.

Shinoff said it’s a complicated case “in terms of people’s perceptions, people’s recollection, and there’s a large passage of time.”

On Thursday, school officials denied a request to interview Gommel and the head football coach, Chris Hauser, who has not been deposed.

Robert Francavilla, an attorney for Eveland’s family, said the latest deposition confirms what really happened.

“Scotty lives every day with an injury that we believe could have been prevented,” Francavilla said.

Eveland’s parents, Diane Luth and stepfather Paul Luth, said they had no idea their son was experiencing headaches. They now devote themselves to caring for him.

Until Breanna Bingen’s deposition in September, there was no mention of Eveland having a health complication.

More than 50 depositions have been taken for the lawsuit — from doctors, paramedics and others connected to the football team or the game. Only Bingen and now Trevor Sattes have spoken about Eveland complaining of headaches, although one player testified that Eveland was acting disoriented during the game.

Until this fall, the family had focused their lawsuit against the maker of Eveland’s helmet and the question of whether Eveland was sent to the hospital in a timely manner. The information from Bingen and Sattes has changed the target dramatically, Francavilla said.

Bingen testified that she was one of several student trainers on the field the night of Eveland’s collapse. She recalled that he twice complained about headaches during the week before the game and sat out parts of two practices. She also remembered overhearing him tell Gommel a few minutes before the game about not being able to see the football because his head was killing him.

Eveland wanted to skip at least the first quarter in hopes that his head would feel better, Bingen testified, but Hauser disagreed and told Gommel, “you’re no doctor.”

Bingen, now a member of the Army National Guard, hasn’t been available for comment.

The person who corroborated her testimony was Sattes, now 21 and a college student studying to become a trainer. Sattes testified that he considered Gommel to be his mentor, and that he met with Gommel for lunch the Monday or Tuesday following Eveland’s collapse.

In a statement signed by Sattes and then confirmed during the deposition, Sattes said: “While eating lunch, I asked Mr. Gommel again what happened with Scotty. He told me he was going to explain what occurred in order to make me a better trainer. ... Mr. Gommel then stated that Scotty told him he did not feel well enough to play the first quarter and that Scotty did not feel like he should play. Mr. Gommel told me that he assessed Scotty’s condition and found him to be a little wobbly and having trouble focusing.

“Mr. Gommel then told me he went to Coach Hauser to discuss Scotty’s condition. ... Mr. Gommel said Coach Hauser made the decision to play Scotty.”

Through school officials, Hauser declined to comment for this story.

During her deposition, Bingen also testified that Principal Brad Lichtman, Gommel and an assistant football coach told her and others to not talk about the case with lawyers or the media. An attorney for the school district said that never happened, and Sattes didn’t address that issue in his deposition.