Santa Clara County Jury Awards $37.5 Million to Taylor & Ring's Client as Part of the $102.5 Million Verdict Against Union School District, Which the Trial Court Later Upheld in Full
After trial: Upheld: the trial court denied Union School District's motion for a new trial and its challenge to the judgment in 2022, leaving the $102.5 million combined verdict intact.
Won by Taylor & Ring, LLP.
A Santa Clara County jury awarded $37.5 million to a woman represented by Natalie Weatherford of Taylor & Ring, part of a combined $102.5 million verdict against Union School District for failing to act on years of warnings about music teacher Samuel Neipp, who abused her and another student at Dartmouth Middle School. The trial judge later denied the district's motion for a new trial and its challenge to the judgment, leaving the verdict intact.
What happened
Samuel Neipp taught music at Dartmouth Middle School in San Jose, and for years Union School District had reasons to look harder at him. Parents alerted administrators about inappropriate text messages he was sending to female students in 2010 and again in 2013. The district did not remove him from the classroom. Instead it granted him tenure and later named him Teacher of the Year. His abuse of students, which began as early as 2009, continued until 2017.
Neipp was arrested in 2017 after threatening to publish intimate images of one of his victims. He eventually pleaded no contest to a dozen felony charges and received a 56 year prison sentence. The criminal case answered what Neipp had done. It did not answer why a teacher who had drawn repeated parental complaints was still alone with students years later. That question went to a civil jury.
Two survivors sued the district in 2019, and their cases were consolidated for a single trial in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Natalie Weatherford of the Los Angeles firm Taylor & Ring represented the second plaintiff, identified in court only as Jane Doe 2, a woman who came forward after Neipp's arrest. San Jose attorney Lauren Cerri represented the other plaintiff. The trial turned on what administrators knew and when, and on the district's decision to defend itself by pointing elsewhere. "Their strategy at trial was to blame everyone but themselves and they took zero responsibility during the trial," Weatherford told KTVU.
In late March 2022, the jury returned a combined verdict of $102.5 million. It awarded Weatherford's client $37.5 million, finding the district 55 percent responsible for the harm she suffered, and awarded the other plaintiff $65 million, with the district 80 percent responsible. The total was widely reported as one of the largest civil awards in Santa Clara County history in a school sexual abuse case.
The district did not accept the number quietly. It moved for a new trial and challenged the judgment, arguing the award was excessive. Later in 2022, Superior Court Judge Eric Geffon denied both motions and left the verdict standing in full. For a district that spent trial deflecting responsibility, the ruling closed the argument: twelve jurors and the judge who heard the same evidence both concluded the warnings were real, the inaction was the district's, and the price of that inaction was $102.5 million.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.KTVU FOX 2: Jury awards $102 million to women abused by San Jose teacher as teens, naming Natalie Weatherford as counsel for Jane Doe 2 ($37.5 million) and quoting her on the district's trial strategy
- 2.Los Angeles Times (via Yahoo): Jury awards $102.5 million to two students molested by San Jose music teacher; Weatherford represented Jane Doe 2, awarded $37.5 million, and Lauren Cerri represented Jane Doe 1, awarded $65 million
- 3.Patch (Cupertino): $102M award in sex abuse lawsuit against Union School District, with the $65 million and $37.5 million breakdown and the jury's 80 percent and 55 percent liability findings against the district
- 4.Union Leader: Judge upholds $102.5M verdict against school district; Superior Court Judge Eric Geffon denied the district's motion for a new trial and its challenge to the judgment
- 5.Lawdragon Lawyer Limelight: Natalie Weatherford, partner at Los Angeles-based Taylor & Ring, discussing the March 2022 $102.5 million Union School District verdict
- 6.Taylor & Ring, LLP (firm)
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