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Archived Articles |
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Judge rules Bedford Co. School Board didn't meet student's needs
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BEDFORD CO. - A judge has ruled that the Bedford County School Board did not meet the needs of a former student with learning disabilities in requirement with federal law.
U.S. District Court Judge Norman Moon ruled in an April 23 opinion that the board failed to provide the student, now 11 years old, a “free and appropriate education” as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
Moon’s ruling in Lynchburg overturns a decision by an officer appointed by the state Supreme Court to preside over a formal proceeding in 2008 regarding the matter. That proceeding, called a due process hearing, was the first involving the Bedford County school division in 10 years. The child’s mother, a Forest resident, had appealed that decision to federal district court; Moon’s ruling is the result of that action.
An attorney who represents the school division and a school board member said on Monday that an appeal is planned.
The student, referred to in the lawsuit as “D.B.”, attended Thomas Jefferson Elementary School from 2004 to 2008. He now attends New Vistas School in Lynchburg.
The child’s mother is seeking $93,000 in attorney fees, two years of private school tuition and related travel expenses, according to her attorney, Hank Bostwick, with the Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley.
Bostwick said on Monday that they are “extremely pleased” with the new ruling.
“We also believe it’s a shame to have waited so long for D.B. to get the education he was entitled to years ago and the schools shouldn’t have been fighting this at public expense in hard economic times,” he said. “The cost of litigation is going to far exceed costs of education for this child.”
D.B., who was 9 years old when the litigation started, suffers from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and other disabilities, said Bostwick. He said the ruling marks the first time in decades that a special-needs student has won a case of this type in the Western District of Virginia.
Kathleen Mehfoud, a Richmond attorney representing the Bedford County school division, said the appeal would be filed within the next few weeks. She called the ruling a “surprise.”
The school board and the school division “still believe they offered the student an appropriate education,” Mehfoud said.
Gary Hostutler, the school board member who represents Forest, said the ruling following the 2008 due process hearing shows that the division gave the child a proper education.
“We continue to believe that,” he said.
Ryan Edwards, a spokesman for the division, declined to comment.
In a 42-page opinion, Moon ruled that the hearing officer in 2008 erred in determining the school division properly evaluated D.B. as a child with a disability. The opinion states the officer observed the child was promoted a grade every year, but failed to comprehend that the “token advancement” was “at best, a sad case of social promotion.”
Bostwick said that means the student was promoted a grade level each year and after four years still could not read above a pre-kindergarten level.
“He never met a reading benchmark for any of those years,” Bostwick said. “He remained in an inclusion classroom for all four years and his educational placement was never changed.”
According to the opinion, the school board believes it properly evaluated D.B. for all suspected disabilities, reasonably calculated an “individual educational plan” and the 2008 decision was correct.
The school board asked the court to deny tuition reimbursement because it claims the mother did not give proper notice before enrolling D.B. in private school, according to the opinion. Moon turned back that reasoning, though, noting that the student’s mother had repeatedly requested placement for her son at New Vistas, and “common sense indicates that she would not have repeatedly requested that Defendant place her son at (New Vistas School) had she not been seeking such placement at public expense.”
Debbie Hoback, the school board chair, did not return a phone call seeking comment Monday.
According to meeting minutes, the board voted in June 2009 to transfer $70,000 from its 2008-09 operating budget to cover litigation costs.
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WSLS News - 12/14/2010
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Beware the return of the undead debt
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In the wake of Halloween, the young goblins, ghosts and other creatures of the afflicted imagination whom we welcomed for trick or treat have retired their costumes for another year. Not so another creature of the undead with even more potential for serious fright: Zombie debt stalks the living every month of the year.
Zombie debt is mostly credit card accounts come back from the dead -- so long overdue that the credit card issuers had given up on collecting it. The credit card companies once used to collect their own accounts, pursuing defaulting debtors with phone calls, letters and ultimately lawsuits. If none of these worked, that old debt was written off as a tax loss and sat around in the electronic back drawers of the credit industry's file cabinets gathering dust. But over the last decade or so, a creative new industry has arisen to turn this ancient debt into a methodical wealth machine. Here's how it works.
Inspired by the business failure of large retailers like Montgomery Ward that sold off their old customer accounts, some creative entrepreneurs began buying up thousands of old credit card accounts at a time -- "portfolios" of zombie debt -- for a tiny fraction of their face value.
Asset Acceptance Capital Corp., for example, noted in its fiscal year 2009 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that in 10 years it had purchased $40.4 billion of such debt for an average of 2.47 cents on the dollar. The mushrooming debt buyer companies, bearing such innocuous names as LVNV Funding LLC, Unifund Partners LLC and Portfolio Recovery Associates LLC (Virginia's own entry), began bringing waves of collection lawsuits. The cascade of debt buyer suits reached such volume that Virginia's courts began setting aside special days for the massive burden of debt buyer cases.
There is undoubtedly some measure of economic justice in neglected bills coming home to roost with those who had neglected them. But there was usually a reason that these accounts didn't get paid in the first place: The debtors simply had no money, or their only income was so pitiful or exempted by law (Social Security, for example) that they couldn't be garnished, or they couldn't be located, or they had declared bankruptcy. And many proved uncollectible in the hands of debt buyers for the same reasons. With their relatively trivial investment, however, the debt buyers could do very nicely, thank you, with recovering an occasional $5,000 on an account they bought for $120.
Several aspects of this mass collection of moldy debt are disturbing. One disturbing constant is that so few people sued by debt buyers show up to defend themselves. The Federal Trade Commission's July 2010 report on debt collection, "Repairing a Broken System," notes a prevalent estimate of no-shows at around 90 percent.
My experience advising those sued for zombie debt confirms the large number of judgments against people who don't show up because they never got the suit papers (probably because of the age of the addresses), people who have long ago thrown away their documents needed to defend and seniors who will go hungry to pay the mountain of punitive interest and gotcha charges that make up the bulk of these claims.
Almost every time a defense is raised in a zombie debt court case, the plaintiff debt buyer drops the case. It turns out that the trivial investment made to buy these debts doesn't really buy the contracts, just a computer listing of account information, which is commonly churned into a robo-signed affidavit like those that have recently embarrassed the mortgage foreclosure industry. Thus, it is seldom provable that the debt buyer really owns the account, or that the claim is for the right amount. All around the country, judges are holding their noses while entering judgments against debtors who don't know to defend these cases.
Most disturbing, however, is that by definition zombie debt is really old, and well past the time limit for suing (the statute of limitations). The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits lawsuits or threats of suit on too-old debt by debt collectors such as the debt buyers and their lawyers. The entire industry is thus based on a calculated disregard for the law. They sue anyhow, reckoning that they can just dismiss any given case if somebody figures out what they're up to and blows the whistle.
Halloween's over -- it's past time the regulators, the consumer advocates and the courts demand more accountability from the zombies.
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Roanoke Times editorial by Henry Woodward - 12/14/2010
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Roanoke Times publishes Op Ed coauthored by LASRV staff attorney
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On August 13, 2008, the Roanoke Times ran an Op Ed cowritten by Hank Bostwick, LASRV staff attorney, and Sarah Geddes, a staff attorney with the Legal...
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Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley - 08/13/2008
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LASRV featured on WVTF
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Local public radio station WVTF is broadcasting a two-part news story about the Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley. Par...
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Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley - 07/25/2008
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LASRV featured in Roanoke Star Sentinel
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Please click
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Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley - 07/14/2008
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County schools rein in fees due to Legal Aid efforts
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On June 11, 2008, the Roanoke Times ran a front page story about Roanoke County...
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Roanoke Times - 06/11/2008
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Rachel MacKnight speaks at Building a New World Conference
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On May 23, 2008, LASRV staff attorney Rachel MacKnight spoke as part of the Domestic Violence panel at the Building a New World Con...
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Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley - 05/27/2008
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Virginia Commission on Immigration to hold hearings in Roanoke
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The newly created Virginia Commission on Immigration has announced plans to hold a series of public hearings in locations around th...
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Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley - 05/27/2008
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Seminar on Landlord-Tenant Law
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On May 15, 2008, LASRV staff attorney David Beidler will be the guest speaker at an educat...
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Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley - 04/28/2008
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