Leang v. Jersey City Bd. of Educ.

• Decision Date: 16 April 2009
• Docket Number: A-21/22 September Term 2008.
• Parties: Sopharie LEANG and Song Leang, Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. JERSEY CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION, Vladimir Ashworth, Charles T. Epps, Jr., (in his capacity as Vice Principal) and Angela Bruno, Defendants-Appellants, and Jane and John Does 1-5, Defendants. Sopharie Leang and Song Leang, Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. Jersey City Medical Center Mobile Crisis Unit and The Jersey City Medical Center, Defendants-Appellants, and Jersey City Police Department, John and Jane Does 1-5 being employees of the Jersey City Medical Center Mobile Crisis Unit and/or the Jersey City Medical Center and John and Jane Does 6-10 being employees of the Jersey City Police Department and City of Jersey City, Defendants.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

969 A.2d 1097

198 N.J. 557

Sopharie LEANG and Song Leang, Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. JERSEY CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION, Vladimir Ashworth, Charles T. Epps, Jr., (in his capacity as Vice Principal) and Angela Bruno, Defendants-Appellants, and Jane and John Does 1-5, Defendants.

Sopharie Leang and Song Leang, Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. Jersey City Medical Center Mobile Crisis Unit and The Jersey City Medical Center, Defendants-Appellants, and Jersey City Police Department, John and Jane Does 1-5 being employees of the Jersey City Medical Center Mobile Crisis Unit and/or the Jersey City Medical Center and John and Jane Does 6-10 being employees of the Jersey City Police Department and City of Jersey City, Defendants.

A-21/22 September Term 2008.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued January 5, 2009.

Decided April 16, 2009.

Howard M. Nirenberg, Hackensack, argued the cause for appellants Jersey City Board of Education, Vladimir Ashworth, Charles T. Epps, Jr. and Angela Bruno (Nirenberg & Varano, attorneys; Mr. Nirenberg and Sandra N. Varano, on the briefs).

Catherine J. Flynn Tafaro, Westfield, argued the cause for appellants Jersey City Medical Center Crisis Unit and Jersey City Medical Center (Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, attorneys; Ms. Flynn Tafaro and Monica Vir, on the briefs).

Daniel W. Sexton, argued the cause for respondents.

Karen L. Jordan, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for amicus curiae State of New Jersey (Anne Milgram, Attorney General of New Jersey, attorney; Nancy Kaplen, Assistant Attorney General, of counsel; Ms. Jordan and Larry R. Etzweiler, Deputy Attorney General, on the brief).

Justice HOENS delivered the opinion of the Court.

Recent events around our nation and here in New Jersey have made it clear that children in our schools are vulnerable to dangers that many of us could not have even imagined when we were growing up. In response to that sad reality, our school systems, often in cooperation with law enforcement personnel, have embraced a variety of means and methods designed to return our neighborhood schools to the relatively safe havens long believed to be most conducive to effective education. Those efforts have much to commend them. At the same time, however, those same strategies often impact on the freedoms once enjoyed, and long cherished, by both the students and those who work in our schools. Creating mechanisms to ensure that our children, our educators, and our other school employees can learn and work in an atmosphere that is both safe and nurturing while, at the same time, maintaining a system that protects the rights of all of them, are not mutually exclusive goals. Rather, they are goals that although sometimes in apparent conflict, nonetheless can and must be harmonized.

Today we are confronted with a factual setting in which we must balance those important rights and responsibilities in one such apparent conflict. This matter stands at the intersection between the rights of a school employee who, it is alleged, uttered words that threatened the safety of the children then in her care, and the obligations of the other school employees who claim to have heard those words or who, when advised of them, exercised what they believed was their authority to act to ensure the safety of those students. That the school employee's words may have been misunderstood, that the other school employees or authorities might have had other options available to them for dealing with the perceived threat, are but a part of the fabric against which we must analyze these important goals and interests in the specialized setting of our public schools.

I.

The claims for relief set forth by plaintiff Sopharie Leang and her spouse, Song Leang, arise from a complex series of events relating to plaintiff¹ Sopharie Leang's employment as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) in a Jersey City elementary school. Because the factual assertions are recited at length in the Appellate Division's published opinion, Leang v. Jersey City Bd. of Educ., 399 N.J.Super. 329, 944 A.2d 675 (App.Div. 2008), we need not reiterate them. Instead, for purposes of our review, we elect to summarize only the salient facts and those as to which our review of the record differs from that of the appellate panel. Nevertheless, because this matter comes to us in the context of a motion for summary judgment, we recite our summary in the light most favorable to plaintiff.²

Plaintiff, who was born and raised in Cambodia, where she asserts her family was victimized by the Khmer Rouge, emigrated to this country and achieved an advanced degree in foreign languages. She was hired, pursuant to a one-year contract, by defendant Jersey City Board of Education, as a provisional teacher, N.J.S.A. 18A:26-2a(a), of ESL. At the time, defendant Charles T. Epps, Jr. was the Superintendent of Schools, defendant Angela Bruno was the principal of the school where plaintiff was assigned, and defendant Vladimir Ashworth was another ESL teacher. Plaintiff asserts that Ashworth sexually harassed her, that she rebuffed his advances, and that she complained about him to some of the other teachers. She concedes that she did not heed the advice of her acquaintance, an attorney in New York, who suggested that she make a complaint about Ashworth to Bruno.

On May 14, 2002, plaintiff was advised in writing that her contract would not be renewed for the following year. She did not request a statement of reasons or otherwise challenge the non-renewal decision. As part of this litigation, however, she asserts that Ashworth did not give her the ESL textbooks that she needed and that Bruno did not provide her with a mentor, both of which interfered with her job performance and negatively impacted her evaluations, and both of which, she alleges, were motivated by Ashworth, who sought revenge for her refusal of his advances.

The events that give rise to plaintiff's essential factual allegations took place on June 24, 2002, which was the last day of the school year. All parties agree that plaintiff and Ashworth were in a classroom, along with two teaching assistants and twenty-two students, and that Ashworth asked plaintiff what had happened to her voice. Plaintiff asserts that she told him that she had laryngitis, and that, as the discussion between them continued, she said that it was caused by stress. According to plaintiff and one of the witnesses, when Ashworth pressed her about that comment and about the cause of her stress, she said, "my doctor said the amount of stress in my body could have killed some people." Ashworth, however, insists that plaintiff initiated the conversation and, more to the point, that plaintiff said to him "I'm so stressed out that I can kill twenty-two people."

Ashworth was alarmed by that statement in light of what he described as plaintiff's "bizarre behavior" and her "stressed out and ... very unkempt" appearance. Believing that plaintiff had uttered a threat to the safety of the students in the room, he immediately reported what he had heard to the school nurse, and eventually to Bruno. Based on Ashworth's report, plaintiff was escorted to the nurse's office. Apparently plaintiff believed that if she went to the nurse's office and awaited Bruno's return from the graduation ceremony that was then underway, she would be rehired for the following year. When Bruno and the school board's social worker attempted to speak with plaintiff about what Ashworth reported had happened, and about what was troubling her, she became distraught.

At the time of those events, the Board was a signatory to a document entitled "A Uniform State Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials" (the Agreement), which had been adopted by the Board and approved by both the Department of Law and Public Safety and the Department of Education. Section 1.2 of the Agreement, titled "Nature of the Problem," declares: "[r]ecent events in New Jersey and throughout the nation have made clear that while schools are generally safe places for students and staff members, a wide range of offenses are occasionally committed on school property, during operating school hours." That section further provides that the signatories recognize that any such offense, including "the actual or threatened infliction of bodily injury ... not only undermines the educational environment, but can directly endanger the safety and well-being of members of the school community." Because of those concerns, the parties also agree that an event of that type "requires an appropriate and decisive response."

In order to effectuate its purposes, Section 4.10 of the Agreement requires school officials to immediately notify the Jersey City Police Department,

whenever any school employee in the course of his or her employment develops reason to believe that a student has threatened, is planning, or otherwise intends to cause death, serious bodily injury, or significant bodily injury to another person under circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that the student genuinely intends at some time in the future to commit the violent act or to carry out the threat.

Although the Agreement addressed perceived threats by students rather than by a faculty member, defendant Jersey City Police Department's Emergency Services Unit (ESU) was summoned in response to plaintiff's behavior. Because it had been reported to ESU that there was an "emotionally disturbed person" at the school, when ESU arrived, it was accompanied by defendant Jersey City Medical Center Mobile Crisis Unit and its Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). According to Steven Nacim, one of the EMTs, plaintiff was "irate," "upset," and "frantic," and reported that she had a history of hypertension. When she allowed him to do so, Nacim took her blood pressure and found that it was elevated. Nacim testified that a police officer accompanied them when they took ...