Seattle Public Schools Pays $16 Million Over Garfield Coach Abuse
After trial: This is a negotiated settlement, not a court judgment, so no appeal applies to the civil claim. Seattle Public Schools pays $500,000 of the $16 million directly, with the remainder covered by the Washington Schools Risk Management Pool, the district's insurer. The related criminal cases ran on after the civil settlement: Marvin Hall pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a minor in the summer of 2025, and Walter Jones's child rape trial ended in a hung jury and a mistrial in December 2025, with a retrial set for March 3, 2026. We could not confirm the outcome of that retrial.
Seattle Public Schools agreed to pay $16 million in October 2024 to settle a lawsuit from a former Garfield High School student who said two coaches sexually abused her over several years while the district failed to intervene. The suit named volunteer coach Walter Jones, who had been barred from district employment yet was allowed to coach anyway, and assistant coach Marvin Hall, who continued an abusive relationship with her into her college years. It is the largest tort settlement in the district's history, funded mostly through the district's insurance pool. Both coaches were separately prosecuted in King County Superior Court: Hall pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a minor in 2025, and Jones's child rape trial ended in a hung jury and a mistrial in December 2025. Paul Sewell and Tomas Gahan of Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna represented the former student.
What happened
Seattle Public Schools agreed in October 2024 to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a former Garfield High School student who said two coaches sexually abused her for years while the district failed to stop it. The settlement is the largest tort payout in the district's history.
The lawsuit centered on Walter Jones, a volunteer weightlifting coach the district had already marked 'do not rehire' after firing him from Ballard High School. Despite that flag, Jones was allowed to volunteer at Garfield, where he began working with the student in 2013 when she was 13 years old and had been singled out for her basketball talent. The complaint said Jones raped her repeatedly over the next two years and threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone.
A second coach, Marvin Hall, entered the case years later. Hall, an assistant coach for Garfield's boys' team who also helped with the girls' program, was married with six children when he began an abusive relationship with the student at age 17, according to the lawsuit. It continued after she graduated and went to colleges out of state, and past her 21st birthday: Hall sent her text messages, visited her, and flew her back to Seattle, conduct her attorneys said was part of his ongoing manipulation.
The lawsuit accused the district of negligence for letting Jones onto campus despite the do-not-rehire designation and for failing to report or prevent the abuse once warning signs appeared. It cited a Seattle Police Department investigation that found other district employees had considered some of Jones's behavior inappropriate but did not know about the assaults, and said Garfield's athletic director knew Jones was coaching without district approval.
Both men were criminally charged in King County Superior Court over the conduct described in the civil suit, and those cases outlasted the settlement. Hall pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a minor in the summer of 2025. Jones went to trial in November 2025 on four counts of child rape; jurors deadlocked after five days and the judge declared a mistrial in early December 2025, setting a retrial for March 3, 2026. When the settlement was announced, the attorney representing Jones declined to comment, Hall's attorney did not respond to a request for comment, and the district denied liability in settling.
Under the settlement, Seattle Public Schools pays $500,000 in defense costs and settlement fees, with the Washington Schools Risk Management Pool, the district's insurer, covering the remainder of the $16 million. Paul Sewell and Tomas Gahan of Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna represented the former student. 'We appreciate the Seattle School District's recognition of the magnitude of our client's harm,' Sewell said, adding that while she was relieved by the outcome, 'our client will never reclaim her childhood.' Gahan said the settlement reflected, at least somewhat, what the former student had gone through, and argued that school sports let coaches insulate their relationships with players from adult oversight.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Seattle Times, Oct. 31, 2024: confirms the record $16M settlement, the breakdown ($500,000 from the district, remainder from the Washington Schools Risk Management Pool), the allegations against Walter Jones and Marvin Hall, the negligence and failure-to-report claims, the criminal charges, and quotes attorney Paul Sewell.
- 2.Fox 13 Seattle, Oct. 31, 2024: reports the $16M settlement, the July 2024 filing and the claims pleaded, and states that attorney Paul Sewell of PWRFL represented the student.
- 3.KUOW, Oct. 30, 2024: independently reports the settlement, the police-report detail on the athletic director and Jones's campus access, the insurer split, and quotes Tomas Gahan as an attorney for the plaintiff.
- 4.Seattle Times, July 2024: establishes the venue, reporting the complaint was filed in King County Superior Court in July 2024, and the causes of action against the district.
- 5.Seattle Times via Spokesman-Review, Dec. 3, 2025: reports the hung jury and mistrial in Walter Jones's child rape trial, the March 3, 2026 retrial date, and that Marvin Hall pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a minor in the summer of 2025.
More proven verdicts from Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna
All Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna proven verdicts →A King County jury awarded $857 million in December 2023 to seven people, five former students and two parent volunteers, who said they were sickened by PCBs leaking from light fixtures at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington. The verdict included $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages against Monsanto and its successor Pharmacia. In April 2024 a King County judge cut the punitive award to $365 million under Missouri's statutory cap on punitive damages, reducing the total to $438 million. Monsanto appealed, and Bayer said in February 2026 that Monsanto had settled the remaining Sky Valley jury verdicts on confidential terms, so what was ultimately paid is not public.
A King County jury returned an $82 million verdict against Monsanto in December 2022 for a family exposed to PCBs at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, awarding $20.5 million in compensatory damages and $61.5 million in punitive damages to one member of the family. The firm described it as the largest verdict against Monsanto for an individual plaintiff in any PCB case.
Emily Daley, 42, had spinal surgery in July 2011 to correct a worsening curve from scoliosis she had lived with since her teens. Instead of straightening her spine, the operation by Dr. Michael Thomas left her with a severe forward and left lean, and Daley alleged Thomas then failed to provide adequate follow-up care. For three years she lived with pain that was at times severe enough to make her lose consciousness, until a different surgeon corrected the lean in August 2014. In July 2017, a Yakima County Superior Court jury awarded her $1,219,052, covering her past medical expenses and non-economic damages.
Related sexual abuse verdicts
A Riverside County jury awarded $2.28 billion on April 25, 2023, to a woman identified as Jane Doe who was sexually abused by her stepfather from age 5 until she was 14, at the family's Lake Elsinore home and at events and property of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The stepfather, who had pleaded guilty in 1997 to lewd acts with a child under 14 and served three years in state prison, admitted the abuse at deposition, then skipped the first day of jury selection and withdrew his answer rather than face a bench warrant. The church settled for $1 million and the mother for $200,000 before trial. The verdict, $836 million in compensatory damages and $1.44 billion in punitive damages after three days of deliberation, is one of the largest ever returned for a single survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
A San Antonio jury returned the largest sexual assault verdict in U.S. history against a sole assailant, awarding $325 million to a child sexually abused by her grandfather over multiple years.
A St. Charles County judge entered a $300 million bench-trial judgment for a child, identified only as G.T., who was physically and sexually abused between the ages of three and five while in the care of Susan and James McLaurie, though one defendant died before the suit was filed and the only known insurance was a $303,000 policy.
A St. Charles County jury awarded $247.3 million to six women sexually assaulted by an unlicensed massage therapist at Oasis Foot Spa & Massage in St. Peters, finding the spa and its owner liable for hiring him without any background check and ignoring an early complaint. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in full in 2024.