LAUSD Pays Parents $9.5 Million After 12-Year-Old Collapses in P.E. and Staff Delay 911 Call

On March 6, 2018, a 12-year-old boy ran laps with his physical education class at Dodson Middle School in Rancho Palos Verdes. He completed four laps around the track, then sat down on the grass with two friends and lay on his back. When a teacher told the students to drink water, he did not get up. His friends told the teacher he did not look good.

Two P.E. teachers found him unconscious but still breathing. According to the account of the family's attorney, Bruce Broillet, in the Los Angeles Times, neither teacher called 911 or started CPR before paramedics arrived, even though both were trained to. The boy had an undiagnosed congenital abnormality in a coronary artery, a condition Broillet said could have been treated with surgery. By the time paramedics reached him, his brain had gone too long without oxygen. He was taken to a hospital in Torrance and pronounced dead.

The parents sued the Los Angeles Unified School District in March 2019. Their complaint alleged that the boy had told his teacher he was sick with the flu and was still made to run, and that staff did not act quickly once he collapsed. A significant part of the case concerned a school rule that told staff to ask the front office to place a 911 call rather than calling themselves. Broillet said the rule added a delay of six to eight minutes and kept dispatchers from coaching the teachers through emergency care while they waited.

The district argued that the death came from a hidden heart defect it could not have foreseen. In May 2021, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Edward B. Moreton rejected that view as too narrow. He ruled that schools have a duty of supervision, and that with CPR-trained teachers and a defibrillator on campus, a student medical emergency was foreseeable. The negligence claim went forward toward trial. The judge dismissed a separate premises liability claim.

Material in the family's trial brief, as reported by the Times, described a chaotic response. The school nurse said she began chest compressions but stopped when she noticed the boy's breathing change. The assistant principal recalled seeing eight compressions, one P.E. teacher saw one, and the other saw none. The fire department reported that no CPR had been given before its arrival. The assistant principal asked for the school's automated external defibrillator nine minutes after students alerted teachers, and it was never used. The nurse, who was assigned to inspect the device daily, did not know the school had one.

On March 29, 2022, the day a bench trial was set to begin, the parties announced a conditional settlement, and the judge vacated the trial date. The terms were not disclosed until September 2022, when the Los Angeles Times reported that the district had agreed to pay the parents $9.5 million. A district spokesperson said LAUSD takes the health and safety of its students very seriously and declined to comment on the litigation. Broillet said the family remains devastated and that he hoped improved training at the district would keep another family from the same loss.