Porter-Gaud Case: $105M
Posted Courtesy of The Post and Courier (http://www.charleston.net)
Published on 10/27/00
BY TONY BARTELME
Of The Post and Courier Staff
A jury Thursday ordered the estates of two Porter-Gaud
School officials to pay $90 million in punitive damages to
the father of a student who was molested by one of the
school's teachers - the largest award ever by a Charleston
County jury.
The verdict came a day after the same jury awarded the
father, Harold Glover of John's Island, $15 million in
actual damages.
After the trial, Mary Cobb, one of the jurors, said they
were trying to send a message. "Kids need to be
protected, and things like this shouldn't be swept under the
carpet."
The jury rendered its punitive damages verdict after hearing
testimony that the school's principal, James Bishop
Alexander, helped a teacher, Eddie Fischer, get a job at
another private school in 1982 - even though Fischer had
molested a student.
Additional testimony showed that shortly after Fischer was
told to resign because of a sexual abuse complaint, longtime
headmaster Berkeley Grimball wrote Fischer a letter thanking
him for his work at Porter-Gaud and offering to help him in
the future.
Grimball also said in a sworn deposition taken before he
died that he felt he had no obligation to call police after
the sexual abuse complaint.
Fischer, 72, is serving 20 years on an array of sexual abuse
charges. He has admitted to molesting more than 40 boys
during his four-decade teaching career in Charleston public
and private schools, including more than 20 at Porter-Gaud.
Grimball died last year, and Alexander killed himself in
1998, several days before he was scheduled to be questioned
in a deposition in connection with the lawsuit.
The $105 million verdict for both actual and punitive
damages eclipses the previous record in the Charleston
County Court of Common Pleas set in 1997. That $21 million
award was against Hill-Rom, a North Charleston hospital bed
manufacturer.
Because of the state's charitable immunity statute,
Porter-Gaud is only liable for $250,000 of the $105 million
verdict. The estates of Grimball and Alexander are covered
under the school's insurance policy, which reportedly has a
$2 million limit.
One of Glover's attorneys, Gregg Meyers, said his client
won't collect the full amount. "Who has $90 million
lying around?" he said. "But the jury's verdict is
useful. It says that every child is terribly important. It
says that the bond between a parent and child is terribly
important, and that this bond should not be interfered
with."
Glover's son, Guerry, said money was never his family's
motivation in bringing the lawsuit. In 1997, he offered to
settle the matter quietly if Porter-Gaud would set up a
counseling fund for Fischer's victims and apologize.
"If they could have found money to help stop the abuse
of children, instead of funding three years of litigation,
Porter-Gaud could have been an example of what to do,"
he said. "Instead, they have become an example of what
not to do."
Porter-Gaud officials could not be reached for comment
Thursday night after the jury's decision. But in a press
release Wednesday after the $15 million actual damages
verdict, the school's Board of Trustees said that
"everyone is a victim here" and that the school
had taken steps to prevent abuse in the future.
Considered one of the top private schools in the region,
Porter-Gaud is the school of choice for many of the
community's power brokers. But since Fischer's arrest in
1997, it also has been the focus of more than a dozen
lawsuits involving its dealings with Fischer.
Four have been settled out of court.
Harold Glover's was the first to reach a jury.
During the trial before Circuit Judge Daniel Pieper,
Glover's attorneys introduced evidence showing that the
school received its first complaint about Fischer in 1973
but did nothing to monitor his behavior or restrict his
access to children.
One of Fischer's victims testified that in 1979 he woke up
on Fischer's bed naked and saw Fischer and Alexander looking
at him. A school superintendent from Anderson testified that
Alexander should have immediately called police.
The mother of another student said that after her son was
molested in 1982, Alexander promised to make sure Fischer
wouldn't be a threat to children in the future. But Thomas
Farin, the former headmaster of College Prep, testified that
Alexander gave Fischer a generally positive recommendation
when he hired Fischer in 1982.
Porter-Gaud had only one witness during the entire trial,
Grimball's widow, Emily.
She took the stand Thursday and described her husband as a
thoughtful person who loved children and Porter-Gaud.
"His love for the school was so great that I was sort
of jealous of the time it was taking," she said,
adding. "He wouldn't do anything to hurt anyone."
When she finished, she sat in the courtroom next to her
daughter and burst into tears.
In his closing argument for Wednesday's punitive damage
phase, the school's attorney, Bobby Stepp, told the jury in
a barely audible voice: "Berkeley Grimball is dead and
will not be punished, and the same is true of Skip
Alexander. All you are left with today is Mr. Grimball's and
Mr. Alexander's family ... These people have not done
anything to warrant your wrath."
But David Flowers, Glover's other attorney, told the jury
that Grimball and Alexander acted in a reckless manner.
"Make an example of them and send a message," he
said. "... Make sure that every school administrator in
the country reads that message and pauses." Saying that
only a large verdict would do this, he concluded:
"Today, you have an opportunity to change the world.
Help us make it safer for kids."
The jury spent two hours and 11 minutes deliberating about
the punitive damages. After the clerk read the number, the
courtroom remained hushed.
"I think two hundred million something was the first
figure we considered," said Cobb, one of the jurors,
outside the courthouse.
She said settling on a number was the most difficult aspect
of the deliberations.
"I didn't see any defense," she said of Porter-Gaud's
case. "I sat there and I wondered how would I feel if
this happened to my son. This shouldn't be tolerated
anywhere."
Nine other lawsuits are pending against the school. The next
trial is tentatively scheduled to begin in mid-November.
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