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By David Gammill, lead trial counsel at the retrial · Last reviewed: September 10, 2026
From the fall of 1978 to the spring of 1981, a teacher and coach employed by the Beverly Hills Unified School District sexually abused a student on school grounds. Forty-four years later, a Los Angeles jury found the District negligent for keeping him there. On November 26, 2025, after a retrial that ran more than four weeks, the jury found $16,000,000 in damages, every dollar of it for the harm done to her and none of it for medical bills or lost wages. The District had admitted the abuse before the trial began. What it fought was whether its own administrators should have known. This is the story of how that case was built and tried. Every case is different, and no past result guarantees any future outcome.
Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a future outcome. If you or your child was abused by someone a school, church, youth program, or other institution should have been watching, call Gammill Law Accident & Injury Lawyers at (310) 750-4149 for a free, confidential consultation.
Before the jury heard a single witness, the court read it a set of stipulated facts: facts both sides agreed were true. The District admitted that its teacher and coach sexually abused the plaintiff, on school grounds, from the fall of 1978 to the spring of 1981, while she was a student at one of its schools. It admitted that he was unfit to be employed there because he had a disposition to sexually abuse girl students.
The teacher himself was no longer a defendant by the time of the retrial. The case that went to the jury was against the District alone, and the District disputed two things: that any administrator or supervisor knew or should have known he was a danger, and the amount of the harm. Those were the only questions tried.
He groomed her over three school years under a fabricated pretext of authority, and he made her silence a condition. She did not have the word for what was being done to her until it was over.
Years before the plaintiff’s abuse began, another student had reported the same teacher. She went to a department chair the same day. He and his wife walked her to the school’s front office, where she told a staff member what had happened. The staff member said the principal was in a meeting and that she would pass it along.
Weeks later, that student was allowed out of his class. Nothing else was done. He kept his job, his classroom, and his team. That student took the stand at this trial, more than four decades later, and told the jury what she had reported and to whom.
Why did that matter so much? Because the District’s defense was that no one in charge ever knew. A report to a department chair that reached the front office, followed by a schedule change that only the principal had the authority to grant, is exactly the kind of evidence that defense turns on.
The plaintiff did not understand she had been abused until April 1981, when a chance remark by a former student made it plain. She drove home and told her mother the same day. Her mother called the school the same day. The principal was unavailable, so she spoke with an assistant principal, then reached the principal, who set a meeting.
The teacher was in the room for that meeting. By the plaintiff’s account, the principal opened by observing that girls sometimes have crushes on teachers. She told most of what had happened. The teacher told her, “I forgive you.” She answered that two people in that room knew exactly what had happened. By her account, the principal then told her she would need to find more victims. By her mother’s account, the principal had told her the day before that the teacher had a ball game that day and could not be spoken to until the next day. The teacher was placed on paid leave pending an investigation.
Her mother went to the superintendent, who told her she needed more conclusive evidence. The family went to the police, and the police came to the house.
The teacher remained on campus for roughly two weeks after the report. She saw him there within days. He was later reassigned to the district office across the street. He attended her graduation that June.
Her classmates turned on her. She was called names between classes. Friends who had filled her family’s house stopped coming; her mother told the jury the phone stopped ringing. Her younger brother walked her from class to class until she graduated. A classmate who testified described her as sullen and withdrawn where she had been friendly and bubbly. No one at the school intervened. The rumor followed her to college.
The harm did not end with graduation. The jury heard about a lifelong inability to trust, in work and in every relationship. Her mother described waiting forty-five years for the daughter she had before to come back. Her brother called it a profound sadness. That is what the $16,000,000 was for: non-economic damages, which compensate the injury itself rather than bills or lost pay. She did not ask for a dollar of medical expenses or lost earnings. Every case is different, and no result in one case predicts another.
In 1981, the plaintiff had the right to sue the District. She did not know that. Asked at trial why she had not, she said, “I didn’t know you could.” The deadline ran, and for decades the claim was legally dead. The jury was told, as a stipulated fact, that she could have brought a claim in 1981 or 1982, that she did not, that the right expired, and that the California Legislature later revived it.
The revival came through Code of Civil Procedure section 340.1, California’s statute of limitations for childhood sexual assault. A 2019 amendment did two things. It extended the deadline for survivors to sue, to age 40 or five years from discovering that an adult psychological injury was caused by the abuse, whichever is later. And for three years beginning January 1, 2020, it revived claims that had already expired, including claims against a school district or other entity whose negligence was a legal cause of the abuse, and including claims that had been barred by the deadline for presenting a claim to a public entity. Her complaint was filed on June 26, 2020, inside that window.
That window closed on December 31, 2022. The law has since changed again: for abuse occurring on or after January 1, 2024, there is no time limit at all. For abuse before that date, the deadlines in force at the end of 2023 still govern, and they now sit in a section of their own, covered next. If you are a survivor weighing whether your claim is still alive, the honest answer is that it depends on when the abuse happened, how old you are, and what the institution knew. That is a conversation worth having with a lawyer before assuming the answer is no.
Survivors of abuse that happened before January 1, 2024 now look to a different section of the code: Code of Civil Procedure section 340.11. The Legislature added it in 2023, effective January 1, 2024. It applies to childhood sexual assault that occurred before that date, and it covers the same three kinds of claims: against the abuser, against a person or institution whose negligence was a legal cause of the abuse, and against one whose intentional act was.
Under section 340.11, the deadline is 22 years after the survivor turns 18, which is age 40, or five years after the survivor discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, that an adult psychological injury was caused by the abuse, whichever is later. A claim against an institution filed on or after the survivor’s 40th birthday must also show that the institution knew, had reason to know, or was on notice of misconduct that created a risk of abuse, or that it failed to take reasonable steps or safeguards to prevent it. Offering counseling, by itself, does not count as a reasonable safeguard. The three-year revival window that opened on January 1, 2020 is written into section 340.11 as well, and it has closed. No claim under either section has to be presented to a government agency before a lawsuit is filed.
Whether a claim for abuse before 2024 is still alive turns on the survivor’s age, when the injury was discovered, and what the institution knew. Those are questions for a lawyer, not a calendar.
Sexual abuse is not part of any teacher’s job, and a district is not liable simply because it employed the abuser. The claim that goes to a jury is negligent hiring, supervision, or retention: that people with supervisory authority knew or should have known the employee was unfit, and failed to act. California’s jury instruction on that claim, CACI No. 426, asks whether the entity hired the employee, whether he was unfit in a way that posed a particular risk, whether the entity knew or should have known of it, and whether that negligence was a substantial factor in causing the harm. The California Supreme Court confirmed in C.A. v. William S. Hart Union High School District (2012) that a district can be held liable this way for its administrators’ negligence in supervising an employee who abuses a student.
In this case the District admitted the hiring and admitted the unfitness. The trial was about the middle element: who counts as a supervisor, and what they knew. The court defined a supervisory employee for the jury as one who oversees the educational environment and the performance of teachers, and whose responsibilities include supervising. The District argued a department chair does not qualify because a chair cannot hire, fire, or discipline. The jury heard from a former department chair who described the job the way the school actually ran it: monthly meetings, assigning classes, evaluating teachers. Whether the chair who received the earlier report was a supervisory employee was the first question on the verdict form.
A first trial ended in a mistrial in 2024. David Gammill was brought in as lead trial counsel for the retrial, trying the case with co-counsel who had been on it from the start. The District, in turn, added Tyson & Mendes, a defense firm that markets its trial lawyers as specialists who parachute in to prevent what it calls nuclear verdicts, jury awards over $10 million.
The retrial began with jury selection on October 29, 2025, in Los Angeles Superior Court, and ran more than four weeks.
The notice case was built the way it was argued in closing, in four steps.
Five other former students came forward and testified. Each described the same teacher and the same pattern. The plaintiff testified over two days, including cross-examination by the District’s new trial counsel. Her mother and brother testified. The school’s principal at the time spoke to the jury through his earlier sworn testimony, read into the record.
The jury reached a verdict on the afternoon of November 26, 2025. Before it could be read, the foreperson handed the court a stack of printouts describing other school sexual abuse verdicts and settlements that had turned up in the jury room. The court determined they were papers from long before this trial, left behind in the room, and that only the foreperson had seen them. The District asked for a mistrial. The court denied it, excused the foreperson, seated the alternate juror, gave the jury fresh verdict forms, and ordered deliberations to begin again from the start at 3:07 p.m.
The reconstituted jury returned its verdict at 4:25 p.m. the same day.
TopVerdict.com listed the verdict among its Top 20 Personal Injury Verdicts in Los Angeles in 2025. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
David Gammill served seven years as a Deputy District Attorney before representing plaintiffs. He has tried over 100 cases to verdict. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. If you or someone you love was abused by a person an institution should have been watching, get your free case evaluation or call (310) 750-4149. The conversation is confidential. There are no upfront legal fees; a fee is collected only if we win, under a written contingency fee agreement that complies with California law.
Disclaimer: This page describes a specific case tried to a jury verdict in November 2025. Its facts, parties, and circumstances are unique, and the result does not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction regarding the outcome of any other matter. Details are drawn from the public trial record; the plaintiff, witnesses, and individual district employees are not named. This page is attorney advertising.
