School Bullying Council

CLEVELAND — An estate case involving a bullied teen who killed himself is being sent back to federal court by the Ohio Supreme Court.

The court decided it didn’t have jurisdiction over the case of 17-year-old Eric Mohat. At issue in the oral arguments heard Feb. 16 was whether claims made by Mohat’s estate could proceed in federal court.

The teen’s parents filed a lawsuit in 2009 claiming their son shot himself in 2007 after months of bullying in school. The Mohats claim teachers and other employees in the Cleveland suburb of Mentor did nothing to stop the bullying.

School attorneys argue the parents had no right to sue on behalf of their son’s estate because the estate didn’t exist in probate court at the time of the suit.

View the discussion thread.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/e3d0bcf2614b4c6ea7f93158928305fa/OH--Suicide-Bullying-Suit/

A U.S. District Court case involving a Chequamegon High School student, Rachell Morenweiser, and her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy, was dismissed on March 24, according to federal documents.

The lawsuit, filed by Morenweiser and Kennedy against the Chequamegon School District in August 2010, had claimed the district “remained deliberately indifferent” to repeated complaints about bullying by classmates against Morenweiser. The suit also had claimed that school officials had taken action against Morenweiser’s step-father, Timothy Kennedy, employed by the district, when he complained about the bullying to school officials.

Chequamegon School District Superintendent Mark Luoma, High School Principal Todd Lindstrom, and School Counselor Katherine Rybak, one of Morenweiser’s classmates, and various insurance companies had been named as defendants in the suit.

The order for dismissal, outlined by District Court Judge Barbara B. Crabb, reads as follows:

each and every legal claim and issue, including cross claims, whether available under state or federal law, which were raised or which could have been raised in this action by any of the parties shall all be dismissed on their merits by the district court, with prejudice, but without an award of costs or fees by the court and without any further notice from or hearing before the presiding district court judge.

http://ashlandcurrent.com/article/11/04/02/bullying-case-dismissed-against-chequamegon-school-district