Brockton Dad Files Lawsuit Against School District For 21 Year Old Son Who Got Suspended Multiple Times For Violent Offenses While In School

 

As you know, I’m pretty familiar with frivolous lawsuits. They’re an affront to the taxpayers, they waste time, and they put an undue burden on the defendant to pay for attorneys to get these cases dismissed. Another example of that happening was a story I saw in the Brockton Enterprise recently.

Brockton Enterprise: A Brockton father filed a lawsuit on behalf of his son, making claims of racial bias within the School Department’s disciplinary process, suing the city, the School Department and the police, seeking $1.7 million in damages over incidents going back more than five years ago.

Michael Dockery said that his son, Maveric, now 21 years old, suffered from distress and embarrassment, and developed an emotional condition that required therapy, during his time at Brockton High School as a result of what he describes as undue, racially biased disciplinary actions taken against Maveric by the school and police. Dockery filed a 17-page complaint at Superior Court on Dec. 27, taking up the the lawsuit pro se, meaning without representation by a lawyer.

So he’s representing himself, going up against a school district which will have a team of lawyers on retainer. This should end well for him.

But the problem is that courts let anyone with access to Microsoft Word file a pro se lawsuit and it will be heard in front of a judge in superior court. This is the “victim” of racial discrimination at Brockton High School, a school that is over 60% black.

If that’s not a sympathetic face I don’t know what is.

The lawsuit describes two incidents that were previously reported by The Enterprise, first in November 2014 when Maveric was charged with assault and battery and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and also suspended from school for three days. A police report from the incident stated that a 16-year-old girl told investigators that Maveric bumped into her on purpose, she pushed him, before he put her in a headlock and pushed her into lockers. Dockery said a surveillance camera video of the incident that he obtained after eight months of stonewalling shows his son is “innocent,” claiming that the initial bump was accidental and that his son was defending himself by holding the girl down during the ensuing altercation, which left him scratched up.

I don’t see how this lawsuit can fail. Sure, he’s been charged with A&B with a dangerous weapon, and in a separate incident put a girl in headlock to “defend himself,” but who hasn’t done that before? I often find myself putting women in headlocks through no fault of my own.

Michael Dockery said that the video was kept from him and his son during the ensuing school disciplinary hearing the following day, and he said that his son received unfairly severe punishment without due process, which altogether the lawsuit argues is a result of a system that disciplines minority students more harshly than white students. School officials have rejected Dockery’s allegations of racial bias, stating that the former Brockton High student was disciplined based on his actions alone.

Of course it’s the racist “system’s” fault for disciplining minority students more harshly than white students. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that his evidence is probably a handful of second hand anecdotes about white kids who put girls in headlocks and weren’t suspended. That’s usually how these things go.

But perhaps Dad didn’t think it was possible for the racial disparity in suspension rates to be directly proportional to the racial disparity in the rate of breaking school rules. No, that can’t be it. That makes way too much sense. Better stick with racism.

Another incident in January 2016 is described by the lawsuit as “retaliation” against Michael and Maveric Dockery for speaking out, writing letters to state officials and organizing a student petition that gained 130 signatures, claiming racial bias within the school district. The tail end of the incident was captured on video and shared on social media, showing Maveric being taken to the ground by two police officers. Maveric Dockery was not allowed on a school bus to go home, then stood in front of it to prevent it from leaving, before police arrived, according to the lawsuit. Michael Dockery said his son should have been allowed on the bus, but was instead wrongly arrested. On the other side, former superintendent Kathleen Smith told The Enterprise at the time that the student “verbally assaulted” the driver and the driver, as a result, was not comfortable allowing him to board the bus.

Oh good, young Maveric with C threatened a bus driver, wasn’t allowed on the bus, and then stood in front of it like the Brockton version of Tiananmen Square. Yea, the only conclusion I can reach here is that this young honor student was the victim of racial discrimination.

Michael Dockery said he filed the lawsuit now, after all this time, because he couldn’t get justice by other means, and since a statute of limitations was expiring upon Maveric Dockery’s recent 21st birthday.

“All those years, the school hasn’t made any type of acknowledgement about the incident,” Dockery said. “They hid the video eight months without showing it to us. To me, it wasn’t right. … They are so blinded by racism, they refuse to follow their job description and follow the law.”

Bruh, you said right here that not even the NAACP would help you out.

Do you know how hard it is to get the NAACP to ignore someone threatening to sue a school district over racial discrimination? They exist for cases like this one. If you can’t even get them on board then it means that even they think your son deserved everything that came his way.

Dockery declined to provide the surveillance video of the November 2014 incident, stating that he wanted all the evidence to come out at a trial. The Enterprise reached out to defendants named in the case, including former assistant headmaster Kevin DaPonte, now the district’s director of instructional technology, who is blamed in the lawsuit for allegedly failing to conduct a fair investigation of the 2014 incident, which the lawsuit argues is an example of the school district “systematically discriminating against minority students.”

Gee whiz, I wonder why he doesn’t want to show the video. It couldn’t possibly be because the little angel was indeed revealed to have assaulted and/or battered another student in the video, could it? Smart move saving it for the trial that will never happen because this will be dismissed faster than any lawsuit in history.

Dockery said that his son has since graduated from Brockton High School, is now in college and is doing well. But Dockery said for several years his son suffered as a result of these incidents, including the assault charges that ended with a juvenile court sentence of six months probation. For a while, Dockery said his son didn’t want to go out and didn’t want to talk to anyone, and was suffering from anxiety attacks, requiring emotional therapy.

“All the emotional distress stems from those incidents and how they were treated,” Dockery said.

So let me get this straight. The kid graduated from high school and is in college and doing well? First of all, I find that hard to believe, based largely on exhibit A.

Secondly, if I were to believe that, then what are the $1.7 million you expect in damages for sir? Do you understand how lawsuits work? If you sue someone it’s because they caused you economic harm. But here you are saying that your son is out there dominating life, which is probably not the smartest thing you could say going into a lawsuit.

This is yet another example of why we need a filter for civil lawsuits. Not every lawsuit is legitimate and needs to be heard by a judge. A clerk can read this over, see how ridiculous it is, and say it’s not worthy of the court’s time. Either that or start making plaintiffs pay for the attorney fees and court costs for the defendants when lawsuits get dismissed. That will end these ridiculous lawsuits real quick.

 

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