An adult woman has tentatively settled her lawsuit against the Long Beach Unified School District, in which she alleged she was the victim of sexual misconduct in 2013 by a substitute teacher at the Jackie Robinson Academy who also showed pornography to the class.
The plaintiff is identified only as Jane Doe B.A. in the Long Beach Superior Court lawsuit that alleged childhood sexual assault, sexual battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and negligent retention and supervision. Her attorneys filed a notice of “conditional” settlement on Thursday with Judge Mark C. Kim.
No terms were divulged and it was not immediately clear if the accord is subject to approval by the LBUSD Board of Education. Trial was scheduled to begin March 27.
A second plaintiff in the case when it was filed, identified only as Jane Doe V.E., dropped her claims last April.
In their court papers, LBUSD attorneys argued that the district could not be deemed liable for the alleged misconduct of the substitute teacher, Pietro Dalia, because his conduct was “outside the course and scope of employment.”
The plaintiff’s attorneys also had no evidence that Dalia was negligently hired or that there was information in his background that should have warned the district not to give him his job, according to the court papers of the district lawyers.
The plaintiff, now in her early 20s and a Long Beach resident, was in the eighth grade at Jackie Robinson Academy on Pine Avenue in the 2012-13 school year, the suit stated. Her regular fifth- and sixth-period English teacher was absent on Feb. 11, 2013, and Dalia was her substitute teacher, according to the suit.
During the sixth period, Dalia, then 49, displayed “disturbing and inappropriate sexual behavior,” the suit alleges. Shortly after class began, Dalia viewed pornography on his cell phone and shared the images with the students, the suit filed in August 2021 stated.
Dalia later went to the whiteboard, picked up a toy dinosaur claw and, while standing in front of the class, started touching his private parts with the object, the suit stated.
Responding to a complaint from a neighboring classroom about the noise and commotion generated by Dalia’s actions, the school principal went to the plaintiffs’ classroom and asked the students what was happening, the suit stated.
“She admonished the students, telling them that she did not want to hear any more calls complaining about them, and then left,” the suit stated.
Later, when Jane Doe B.A. began recording the teacher as he allegedly talked to other female students about pornography, the substitute teacher chased her to the back of the classroom and inappropriately touched the plaintiff, causing her to cry, the suit stated.
Jane Doe V.E. and other students later that day reported Dalia’s alleged behavior to the principal, and later a school counselor, but were brushed off.
Dalia continued to work as a teacher at the school until parents called the police, initiating a criminal investigation against him, the suit stated. Criminal charges were brought against him in September 2013 and he later pleaded no contest to four charges, the suit stated.