Danbury faces lawsuit for waking sleeping student

Teenage boy claims hearing damage when teacher slammed hand on desk

DANBURY - Take one early morning high school math class.

Add a drowsy student who may have been up late the night before.

Multiply it by the sound of the teacher's hand slamming down on the sleeping scholar's desk.

What do you get? A lawsuit -- or at least the possibility of one.

That's the product of an incident at Danbury High School in December, according to documents on
file in the Town Clerk's office at City Hall.

Attorney Alan Barry has notified Danbury school officials he intends to sue them for injuries
sustained by his client, 15-year-old Vinicios Robacher, that were allegedly caused by the teacher
who woke him up.

Robacher suffered pain and "very severe injuries to his left eardrum" when teacher Melissa Nadeau
abruptly slammed the palm of her hand on his desk on Dec. 4, Barry said.

The injuries, and Robacher's resulting hearing loss, may be permanent, he said.

"Many of us have fallen asleep in class and had the teacher wake us up. But what happened here
was more in the nature of an assault and battery," he said. "My client is an extraordinarily bright
young man. He's a computer wizard who works late into the night, and that's probably why he fell
asleep."

The papers at City Hall are only a preliminary notice, a state requirement that must be met before
an actual lawsuit can be filed.

Elio Longo, finance director for the Board of Education, said the claim has been forwarded to the
city's insurance carrier. He declined further comment.

The teacher isn't specifically named as a defendant in the case, but the city, the school board and
its employees are.

"You can't make this stuff up," high school Principal Catherine Richard said. "Does it have merit?
That's for someone else to decide."

:wtf:

Wake Up (http://www.newstimes.com/latestnews/ci_8557051)

Would he have complained if it had been wa?king instead of waking ? :Bad:

Robacher suffered pain and "very severe injuries to his left eardrum" when teacher Melissa Nadeau
abruptly slammed the palm of her hand on his desk on Dec. 4, Barry said.

The injuries, and Robacher's resulting hearing loss, may be permanent, he said.

Were you sleeping on an air horn or something? Because I highly doubt the sound of a hand slap to a desk is going to give you permanent hearing loss. If that was true, I'd be deaf several times over.

Which brings me to a related point... you can sue for this? Is there a statute of limitations, because I could seriously retire on the money I'd earn for every time I fell asleep in class.

Heh. When I was in middle school, my math teacher would throw an eraser at your head if you fell asleep in class. Can I sue for emotional trauma? Probably not. Can I praise him for keeping me awake through class, so I didn't fail? Probably.

The two best things thrown at me while sleeping/not paying attention were a checker and a piece of chalk. Apparently when chalk is thrown at a desk it shatters into a fantastic spray of chalk bits and white powder. That sure as hell kept me awake. haha

I went to a call once where the mother had thrown a frozen chicken at her sleeping son...he was sposed to take the bird out and let it thaw....she came home from work and hit him in the head with it...he had a knot on his noggin bigger than a golf ball....

Just a half hour drive to Danbury from where I live.........

We have a big spring that we drop. It will wake the dead. Also, I have a soft blow hammer that I can rap on my desk or the students desk to wake them up. It just amazes me that people will pay for an education and then sleep through it. Some of the students do work at night. Most, Mommy and Daddy sent them there to get them out of their hair.

How old are your students, Jan? Sounds like you're attempting to teach 17 year old caged weasels on crack.

....My client is an extraordinarily bright young man.....
I'd tell that lecherous lawyer that his client is a fookin whimp and he is a scumbag who's trying to leech what $$$ he can off the state education system by bringing such a frivolous case to city hall (not quite in the court yet).

When I was in the service I had pyrotechnics and all manner of explosions, artillery and machine gun fire going off around me on a weekly/ monthly and sometimes daily basis (sometime only inches away from my head (& ears) and yet I still have perfect hearing. This fooker has a FEMALE slap her hand down on the table and it's considered assault. WTF. I feel embarrassed for this halfwit. However, $$$ can make you do strange things

How old are your students, Jan? Sounds like you're attempting to teach 17 year old caged weasels on crack.

Somedays it seems that is what I am teaching. There is a big difference in age. 18 to 35 year olds, mainly male. Oldest ever 53, youngest ever 16. People from all walks of life. I get people that have been in trouble, high school grads, second career folks, do it yourselfers, re-training people from the NAFTA act. Some make it. Some do not. I do my part to help them make it. Others are simply untrainable. "Caged weasels on Crack" I will say that it is not age related. You can not teach somebody that does not want to learn. They have to be focused. They have to have the want to be different from the past.