Federal Judiciary

HARD HART
By Mark Thompson
markthomp@yahoo.com
Posted 08-20-08

Queens County Justice Duane Hart decided, even before the trial in his court got underway, that a high school student’s effort to blame the school district for a rape by a fellow student was “deficient,” according to the Appellate Division. The Justice’s disdain for the plaintiff’s claim was so flagrant that a unanimous appellate panel was compelled to toss out his judgment in favor of the school district and send the case back to court for a new trial – before a different judge.

The student, identified in the public record as Jane Doe, sued the school district for negligent supervision after she was raped by a fellow student in a stairwell at Bayside High School. Hart dismissed the claim, as a matter of law, after the student presented her case – or at least that part of it that Hart saw fit to let in.

Full post as published by Judicial Reports on August 20, 2008 (boomark / email).