A Louisville lawyer has sued JCPS 53 times, costing the district $2 million – and counting

Andrew Wolfson | Courier Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Attorney Teddy Gordon has tense disagreement with judge in courtroom Attorney Teddy Gordon got into a disagreement with Judge McKay Chauvin about a class-action lawsuit attempt Chauvin didn't think was viable.

When Louisville lawyer Teddy Gordon filed a lawsuit in 2017 on behalf of a Crosby Middle School student, he claimed that the 15-year-old girl was "savagely attacked by a male student inflicting horrific injuries, leaving her a bloody mess on the floor."

In fact, the girl, identified as “M.C.,” later said in a deposition she had skinned her knee.

When he sued on behalf of another Crosby student the same year, Gordon wrote that she was subjected to the "worst kind of sexual harassment because of her gender and race."

But the girl, identified as "R.P.S.," later testified that "she wasn’t really bullied" by fellow students, that "they weren't, like, mean," and that students who "catcalled" her "were just being normal kids."

Gordon withdrew that latter claim, and the first is still pending. Both are among 53 cases he has filed over the past dozen years as he’s created a cottage industry suing Jefferson County Public Schools and its employees.

Gordon says he’s made Kentucky's largest school district safer. About half the suits he’s filed allege that teachers and principals failed to protect kids from bullying or assaults by other students.

But The Courier Journal's review of Gordon's lawsuits also shows that he has made allegations that were exaggerated and others that sought to hold employees accountable for behavior they couldn’t have possibly foreseen.

"While Mr. Gordon may occasionally take on cases we would agree with, his overriding aim certainly appears to be to wage any legal battle he can against our public school system," said Brent McKim, president of the Jefferson County Teachers Association.

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The 72-year-old attorney has scored some significant wins.

Two landmark wins in the early 2000s challenging JCPS' student assignment policies, including one that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, catapulted Gordon to fame and brought clients to his door.

Most were parents who contended that their children were mistreated at JCPS schools. The nation's 29th largest school district, JCPS has more than 98,000 students, as well as 18,000 employees, including 6,700 teachers.

For some clients, Gordon has delivered:

He recovered a $375,000 settlement, the largest in any suit he filed, for the mother of a Lassiter Middle School seventh-grader who allegedly was sexually assaulted on a school bus.

He earned another settlement for $112,500 for a special-needs student who allegedly was raped by another student.

He secured a $50,000 payout for the mother of a sixth-grader at T.J. Middle School, who attempted suicide after he allegedly was bullied by fellow students who called him gay.

And he procured another settlement for $60,500 for an immigrant who alleged his son at Frayser Elementary was assaulted by two students who left him hanging by his shirt on a door hook.

"I’ve become a legend for helping kids,” he said in an interview.

Gordon claims to have won other large claims without filing lawsuits, but citing attorney-client privilege, he declined to release any information about the claims or the claimants that would have allowed the district to identify or confirm the payments.

JCPS spokeswoman Renee Murphy argues that Gordon's claim of enhancing safety is a "broad generalization that oversimplifies the issue."

The district's data shows that assaults and violent incidents have increased 96% between the 2011-12 and 2017-18 school years. Harassment, including bullying, increased 69% over that period, though it declined the last three years.

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Lots of lawsuits. Not many big payouts

The Courier Journal's analysis shows that Gordon's track record with JCPS lawsuits is mixed at best.

Overall, he recovered settlements in 14 cases, barely more than the number he lost. He had a baker's dozen suits dismissed on the merits, including three that are being appealed.

He lost the only case his office took to trial.

Twenty-one suits remain pending. Another four were dropped because he lost contact with his clients or the cases weren't being actively pursued.

Gordon collected an average of $54,214 per settlement, although veteran trial attorneys, including Gary Weiss and William McMurry, said that is skewed by the one large recovery.

“It looks to me like other than that one large one he took a hell of a lot of cases that had potentially little or no merit and were settled for nuisance value,” Weiss said.

McMurry, who helped win a $25.7 million settlement in 1993 for 243 people sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests, brothers and other employees of the Louisville archdiocese, said that other than Gordon's big case, "It just doesn’t seem that is striking a blow for justice."

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Attorney Thomas Clay, though, who also has sued the JCPS school district, commended Gordon for taking on difficult cases and getting decent results.

And a former client, Charles Hall, the only one who responded to a Courier Journal letter seeking comment about Gordon, said he did a "great job for us. We were extremely satisfied."

Gordon won $4,000 for Hall and his wife, Savannah, who accused two teachers in a Stopher Elementary preschool program of breaching a contract to provide a safe learning environment for their child by "demeaning, belittling" and yelling at students.

A district investigation deemed the allegations untrue.

In addition to a combined $759,000 the district has paid to Gordon and his clients in settlements, it has disbursed another $1.57 million in fees and costs to outside law firms to defend the suits.

The district’s insurance policy only covers payments exceeding $500,000, Murphy said.

That means the district has spent about $2.3 million in connection with Gordon's suits, a figure that is sure to rise because of the pending cases.

They include a nationally unprecedented claim in which Gordon is seeking private school tuition for students who allegedly were bullied, harassed or assaulted — a claim JCPS lawyers say could bankrupt the district if Gordon prevails.

Murphy said that while the school district budgets for litigation, it would “certainly” rather spend its money on students.

Superintendent Marty Pollio, commenting last year on Gordon’s lawsuits, noted that “taxpayers pay for everything we do in this district."

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'We just sued and sued and sued'

Gordon, who taught Russian and English at Westport High School from 1968 to 1972 while putting himself through the University of Louisville law school at night, said he didn’t set out to become “the guy who sues the school district.”

He said he once took anything that came in the door at the 121-year-old "Teddy B. Gordon" building on Market Street.

But then he won two huge school cases.

First, in 2000, fighting against 13 lawyers, he persuaded U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II to throw out racial-integration policies that had prevented hundreds of black students from attending Central High School.

Then, seven years later, he reached the pinnacle. Arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court with lawyers from Seattle and President George W. Bush’s Justice Department, Gordon won a landmark ruling in Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education that said race alone may not be used when assigning students to schools.

Despite the historic win, Gordon received several bruising reviews for the quality of his work.

A Columbia Law School professor said at the time that Gordon’s eight-page brief read like "something you’d expect from a prisoner."

And Heyburn, slicing Gordon’s request for $750,000 in fees to $210,000, said Gordon had "sustained the case more upon a conviction than skill."

Still, Heyburn gave Gordon credit: "The undeniable truth is that counsel pursued an epic case against considerable odds and vehement opposition to an astonishing success."

Gordon said after that triumph, parents and school employees began flooding his office with calls.

"We just sued and sued and sued,” he said.

He has generated still more business by holding news conferences to announce new claims, with his clients appearing on camera by his side.

He said more than 60% of his practice is now devoted to suing the district. His suits have named 30 schools.

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Going ‘overboard’ to represent clients

Gordon concedes he sometimes has gone “overboard” in describing his clients’ injuries and claims.

He wrote in one suit that a Noe Middle School student, K.M., suffered a broken nose and a deviated septum when she was punched by a boy, but according to emergency room records cited by the district, her nose wasn’t broken and her deviated septum was congenital.

Gordon also alleged that she was choked, which he later admitted was wrong.

A judge dismissed the case, which the district to date has paid Wyatt Tarrant & Combs $57,289 to defend.

Gordon, who still claims the student’s nose was broken, has appealed.

In a lawsuit for Z.R., a seventh-grader at Frederick Law Olmstead Academy North, Gordon said the boy was punched by another student — and his eye socket was broken — because a counselor assigned to monitor the lunchroom "abandoned her post."

In fact, according to a court opinion, after telling the boys to “stop clowning around,” she had moved on to another part of the cafeteria before the assault.

The Court of Appeals has allowed the case to proceed, however, noting that only one-fourth of the room was being used because the cafeteria had become "a breeding ground for fights."

Gordon withdrew the complaint he filed on behalf of R.P.S, the Crosby student who admitted she wasn’t bullied.

And he said that if the other Crosby student, M.C., “had told me she had scraped her knee, I would have written that she scraped her knee.”

He said sometimes clients misinform him or “give bad answers” in depositions but that he "never makes up facts.”

And the school district has never sought sanctions against him for any of his claims.

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Foreseeing misconduct that can't be foreseen?

The school district has said in court papers that Gordon has repeatedly sought to hold teachers and other employees accountable for misconduct they couldn’t foresee.

For example, in 2013 Gordon sued for the mother of a fourth-grader at Kennedy Montessori Elementary School who climbed on a dumpster, caught her foot, fell and gashed her chin after a librarian had allowed her and other students to take out trash for recycling.

Gordon, who procured a $12,000 settlement for the parent, said the girl should have been supervised.

“She got a nasty scar,” he said. “She was entitled to a few bucks.”

In another case, he sued in 2016 on behalf of the mother of a Fern Creek High School girl who was injured when a student struck her in the eye with a football during gym. The suit, which is pending, alleges a coach negligently failed to control the student.

But the district said the student broke a rule against throwing a ball in a walking area, and that the “one-time event was totally unforeseeable.” The girl's retina detached, requiring corrective surgeries.

The Kentucky Supreme Court has said school officials and teachers have a "duty to provide a safe school environment, but they are not the insurers of children's safety."'

In the suit for K.M., the Noe Middle student, Gordon accused a counselor of negligence in failing to prevent the student from being punched by a boy.

But K.M. admitted he had never punched her before and the district said neither had been previously disciplined, which it said made the assault impossible to anticipate. K.M. also admitted that she ran by the counselor’s office without seeking her help.

“Did it occur to you that instead of confronting him, maybe you ought go in the counselor’s office and report what happened,” the district’s outside counsel, Wyatt’s Tyson Gorman, asked K.M. in a deposition. She said she thought about it but that school officials hadn’t responded to her prior complaints

Judge Mary Shaw, who dismissed the suit, wrote, “One cannot be charged with negligence in failing to prevent what he could now reasonably anticipate.” The Court of Appeals affirmed, and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Gordon’s appeal.

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No precedent for seeking private school tuition

In what the district says could be Gordon’s most expensive lawsuit, he has demanded that JCPS pay private or parochial school tuition for eight former Crosby Middle students who say they were bullied and that teachers and principals failed to prevent it.

Both sides agree that the demand is unprecedented.

Gordon accuses the district of allowing "anarchy" to reign at the school. As a result, he said students were bullied, harassed or assaulted, in violation of their civil rights.

Gorman has written that if Gordon prevails in the case, which is pending in U.S. District Court, it would leave the school system “tottering on the edge of bankruptcy.”

And he said in a motion to dismiss that each of the plaintiffs “readily admitted under oath that they did not tell any adult at school about the incidents, or if they did tell, corrective measures were taken."

Gorman has noted that one of plaintiffs, R.P.S, whose complaint was withdrawn, was only enrolled at Crosby for 19 days before her family sent her to a private school.

And he pointed out that another plaintiff, A.K., a sixth-grader who says she was assaulted in a restroom, admitted in a deposition that she voluntarily went there to fight another student because “I didn’t want to look like a wimp or scared or something.”

The district also said she “never reported the altercation” or sought medical treatment.

Gordon, who disputes that, said a teacher should have intervened after overhearing the feud while both students were still in the classroom.

“I am very proud of this case,” he said.

Murphy, the district's spokeswoman, said she can't comment on pending cases, but in an email she said, "there is not anarchy at Crosby Middle School."

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The 'contumacious comment' that riled a judge

While Gordon has never been sanctioned in a school case, he was thrown out of a courtroom in May for accusing a judge of bias.

The angry confrontation with Judge McKay Chauvin came in a hearing on a sprawling lawsuit suit in which Gordon sued on behalf of six plaintiffs at three schools alleging unrelated claims against 13 defendants.

The grab-bag complaint was filed on behalf of a counselor, an attendance clerk, a security monitor, two teachers and a parent.

The counselor alleged she has suffered panic attacks since suffering a concussion while breaking up a fight; the attendance clerk claimed she’d suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since a school-related shooting; the security monitor said she’s suffered PTSD and depression because of an unsafe school environment; and one of the teachers said she was subject to a hostile work environment “full of stress and tension.”

The other teacher said she was assaulted by a student, triggering dormant PTSD and forcing her to retire, and the parent said her daughter was bullied and school officials failed to stop it.

Gordon announced during the hearing that he was dropping his demand for money damages for those clients and instead seeking a “declaration” that students and employees have the right to a safe working and learning environment.

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He also said he was going to try to turn the case into a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all 115,000 Jefferson County students, teachers and other employees.

Chauvin advised him that would never fly because his plaintiffs’ claims were too dissimilar.

“You have a borderline specious claim,” the judge cautioned.

When Gordon vowed to move forward with the class action anyway, Chauvin warned him it would be unfair to the taxpayers, and if he lost, “I will seriously consider imposing costs.”

Gordon accused Chauvin of bias, to which the judge, growing increasingly angry, replied, “It’s not bias. It’s reality.”

"No, it’s bias," Gordon replied.

"Don’t you say that out loud again, Mr. Gordon,” Chauvin yelled. “Do you understand me?"

Gordon said he did but then complained he’d never been yelled at in court in 48 years.

“You’re very fortunate that all you got was yelled at,” Chauvin said as his bailiff led him from the courtroom. “Step away. We're finished here."

Gordon later filed a complaint to the Judicial Conduct Commission, complaining that Chauvin's outburst "brought the judiciary into disrepute.”

The complaint was dismissed, Gordon disclosed in a motion asking Chavin to recuse himself, which the judge rejected. Chauvin said he wasn't prejudiced against Gordon or his client and had taken "understandable and voluble exception" to Gordon's "contumacious comment."

The case is pending.

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English as a second language

Judges and lawyers also have remarked that Gordon’s complaints are sometimes written so poorly that they border on gibberish.

In his motion to recuse Chauvin, for example, he wrote, "By reason of said impartiality (sic), negating his unprofessional (sic) conduct by yelling and screaming at counsel herein; or personal bias; Judge Chauvin cannot reasonably be expected to afford counsel herein and hid (sic) 150000 possible class a fair and impartial trial."

In the suit in Chauvin’s court, Gordon wrote the following sentence about two of the defendants sued by a client, Jane Bragg, a teacher at Coleridge-Taylor Montessori Elementary School: "Carmichael and Holt being able to listen, chewed out Bragg in front of students walking by and in class because the discussion was in the hallway, Plaintiff Bragg was being bullied and verbally harassed by Defendant, Carmichael.”

Gordon says that some of his pleadings could have been better worded. He attributed deficiencies to lack of secretarial help and to illnesses from which he says he has recovered.

His spokeswoman and publicist, Honi Goldman, who has been a friend of his since childhood, concedes Gordon may not have the most polished court filings.

But she says he cares deeply about his clients.

And she said he has hardly gotten rich from his school lawsuits, as evidenced by his “crumbling” office in a former paint and wallpaper store and his “understated lifestyle.”

He and his wife, Suzanne, a retired preschool teacher, have lived in the same modest home on Old Cannons Lane for 43 years.

“Ted is a simple man who has done, and continues to do, his best to right wrongs of our society,” Goldman said. “Ted loves the law and how the law can help people.”

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/andreww.

Teddy Gordon vs. JCPS

Suits filed against Jefferson County Public Schools: 53

Suits settled: 14

Dismissed, lost at trial or motion for injunction denied: 13

Pending: 21

Dropped for lack of prosecution or lost contact with the client: 4

Settlements won (total): $660,251

Average settlement: $50,789

Smallest settlement: $4,000

Largest settlement: $375,000

JCPS attorney fees and costs: $1,572,518

Total JCPS costs (settlements, fees and costs): $2,232,769

Schools cited in suits: 30

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