Parents can pursue suit against CMS, school officials over child sexual assault

A unanimous North Carolina Appeals Court panel is allowing parents to pursue a lawsuit against Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and three school employees. The complaint targets CMS and the employees for their alleged liaiblity in the sexual assault of a child from 2016 to 2018.

“Defendants claim they are immune from suit under the doctrines of governmental immunity and public official immunity. We hold they are not entitled to either defense,” wrote Judge Jefferson Griffin in an opinion released Wednesday.

The suit from parents Jon and Alicia Brady stemmed from the actions of PlaySpanish, owned and operated by Ricardo Mata and his wife.

PlaySpanish “has provided after-school language programming to students in Mecklenburg County since 1997,” Griffin wrote. “Defendant PlaySpanish ostensibly used public school facilities to conduct its business through the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Use in Schools program (‘CUS’); however, Defendant CMS did not adhere to the CUS regulations and policies governing the program when providing Defendant PlaySpanish access to its facilities.”

The three individual CMS defendants in the case were the CUS manager, director of property management, and executive director of facility planning at the time of the alleged assaults.

“In October 2013, Defendant CMS received a report of Defendant Mata sexually assaulting a child at an elementary school while he was operating Defendant PlaySpanish,” Griffin wrote. “Defendant CMS requested its police division conduct a criminal background check on Defendant Mata, which showed Defendant Mata had been accused of multiple other assaults on both children and adult women between 1993 and 2009. The background check also revealed Defendant Mata had previously been extradited to Georgia because of an investigation for allegedly sexually assaulting a child there.”

“Following the allegation in October 2013, Defendant Mata met with Defendant CMS’s superintendent and denied the allegations via email,” the Appeals Court opinion continued. “Defendant CMS then closed its investigation of Defendant Mata and failed to inform its principals and students’ parents about the results of their investigation and background check.”

“During the 2016–2017 and 2017–2018 school years, Plaintiffs enrolled their daughter in Defendant PlaySpanish while she was a kindergarten and first grade student,” Griffin wrote. “Defendant Mata sexually assaulted her numerous times during ‘lock-down drills,’ which he was not authorized to perform.”

The Bradys filed suit against PlaySpanish, Mata, CMS, and the three school employees in 2021. Complaints against the school system and its employees involved “intentional or reckless infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligence or gross negligence.”

CMS and the employees filed motions to have the suit dismissed. A trial judge rejected the motions in April 2024.

“Defendant CMS argues it is entitled to governmental immunity because it was engaged in a governmental function when allowing Defendant PlaySpanish to use its facilities and did not purchase liability insurance waiving immunity,” Griffin wrote. “Taking the facts alleged in the amended complaint as true, we hold Defendant CMS was engaged in a propriety function, thereby waiving governmental immunity. Therefore, we do not reach the question of whether the insurance policies at issue also had the same effect.”

The individual CMS defendants “argue they enjoy public official immunity and are therefore also immune from liability,” Griffin explained. Appellate judges agreed they “were not acting as public officials and are therefore not entitled to its protections.”

Judges Donna Stroud and Julee Flood joined Griffin’s opinion.