Santa Barbara Jury Finds School District 80 Percent At Fault for Coach's Grooming and Abuse of a Student
After trial: No appeal of the verdict has been reported. A district spokesperson said the verdict was fully covered by the district's insurance carrier.
Won by Taylor & Ring, LLP.
A Santa Barbara jury awarded $25 million to a man identified in court papers as John Doe #2, who was groomed and sexually abused as a teenager by Justin Sell, a former security guard and assistant football coach at Dos Pueblos High School. The December 2023 verdict, reached after a three week trial, apportioned 80 percent of the fault to Santa Barbara Unified School District for keeping Sell employed and failing to report his conduct to law enforcement despite staff being mandated reporters. John Taylor and Natalie Weatherford of Taylor & Ring represented the plaintiff.
What happened
Justin Sell worked as a security guard and later an assistant football coach at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. According to trial evidence, Sell began grooming the plaintiff, a student identified in court records as John Doe #2, in 2008, when the boy was 15 and Sell was in his late twenties. Sell used his position at the school to build trust with the teenager, gave him gifts, and later threatened him to keep him quiet. The abuse continued until 2011.
The case centered on what Santa Barbara Unified School District knew and when. The head football coach had reported Sell's inappropriate behavior toward students at least three times in 2009, and parents had separately raised concerns about the amount of time Sell was spending with their sons. The district did not report Sell to law enforcement. Instead, in June 2011, it arranged for Sell to resign and agreed to give him a neutral job reference for future employers, a step the plaintiff's attorneys argued let a known risk move on to other students rather than face consequences.
Sell was later convicted on two felony counts after two other male students at the school reported him in 2013, and was sentenced to one year in county jail, five years of probation, and lifetime sex offender registration. He has since been named in civil suits by other former students.
The plaintiff filed his civil case against the district and Sell in March 2022, arguing that school employees who were legally required to report suspected abuse instead let it continue and then helped Sell move on quietly. The case went to trial in Santa Barbara County Superior Court, and on December 8, 2023, the jury returned a $25 million verdict, finding Santa Barbara Unified School District 80 percent at fault. John Taylor and Natalie Weatherford of Taylor & Ring represented the plaintiff at trial; Harry Harrison of Tyson and Mendes represented the district.
After the verdict, Weatherford told reporters the jury "recognized the lifelong harm that childhood sexual abuse inflicts on its victims." Taylor said the district and its employees "had multiple missed opportunities to get rid of a problematic employee." A district spokesperson said the verdict was fully covered by the school district's insurance carrier. No appeal of the verdict has been reported.
The district has faced other civil suits from former Dos Pueblos High School students over Sell's conduct, and additional former students have since come forward with similar allegations.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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