Federal judge: Lawsuit against Oxford Schools, counselor and dean can continue

A federal judge ruled Friday that a lawsuit from family members of victims in the November 2021 Oxford High School shooting can proceed against Oxford Community Schools and two school staff members, while also dismissing seven former and current staff members from the case.

Judge Mark Goldsmith in U.S. District Court in Detroit ruled against requests to dismiss the school district along with Shawn Hopkins — an Oxford counselor at the time — and Nicholas Ejak, then the school's dean of students. Goldsmith wrote that the attorneys for the victims' families have plausibly argued that Hopkins and Ejak knew shooter Ethan Crumbley posed a risk to Oxford and failed to address that risk.

The ruling does not mean the district or the staff members have been found liable, it means that attorneys on both sides can move forward in finding more information, the process of discovery, to try to prove or disprove their case further.

Goldsmith dismissed seven Oxford staff members from the claim: former district superintendent Tim Throne, former superintendent Kenneth Weaver, former principal Steven Wolf, restorative practices coordinator Pamela Fine and teachers Becky Morgan, Allison Karpinski and Jackie Kubina.

The ruling comes on the heels of a third-party safety report that found Oxford High staff are not consistently asking students being assessed as possible threats whether they have access to firearms.

Attorney Ven Johnson called the ruling a "monumental win" in the case against the district.

More: First report into Oxford High security and safety policies released

More: Report reviewing Oxford safety procedures at time of shooting is 'imminent,' firm says

"It's a battle — one of many battles — and a very long, difficult war, but we're very proud," he said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press on Friday.

Johnson said he expects the district to appeal the decision next, but also hopes to begin taking depositions in the federal case.

"We are very, very confident that once we have that ability, it will be even more clear than it already is that this entire shooting could have been avoided because of all the knowledge they had at the school," he said.

A spokesperson for Oxford Community Schools did not immediately return a request for comment.

All of the families of the students killed in the mass shooting — Hana St. Juliana, Tate Myre, Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling — have filed suit in federal and Oakland County Circuit Court. Injured students and students struggling with trauma from the attack have also filed various suits. The claims in the state court suits in the county suffered a setback in March, however, when Judge Mary Ellen Brennan ruled that school district employees are immune from civil litigation in the shooting under Michigan's governmental immunity law.

Parents, former board members, want more transparency

The report released Monday examines the high school’s current threat and suicide assessment procedures, as well as safety and security policies. The report found that Oxford’s policies largely follow leading national best practices, but pointed out some improvements, including an inconsistency in how often staff ask students assessed for threats about access to weapons.

According to Guidepost, this was just the first report to be released in what will be a series. An independent investigation of the events leading up to and during the shooting is still forthcoming.

But that assurance has done little to ease frustration among former board members and parents who have for more than a year demanded increased transparency from the district.

Former Board President Tom Donnelly, who resigned from the board in 2022 out of frustration over how the district was handling the aftermath of the shooting, said in an interview with the Free Press on Tuesday that Guidepost’s initial report was thorough, but not “the one that the community wants.”

“The community still hasn't gotten the third-party independent review of what took place in the month preceding, and in the days of, and here we are going on almost a year and a half,” he said.

Korey Bailey, a former board treasurer who resigned around the same time as Donnelly for similar reasons, wrote in an emailed response to reporter questions that he was not surprised to see gaps in threat assessment procedures, and felt that the district did not take threat assessment training before the shooting either.

The report found many elements of Oxford’s threat assessment procedures to be working, including an established centralized reporting system, defined procedures and defined conduct considered possibly threatening. However, the report also found Oxford may be conducting too many assessments, 300% more than a district of its size, creating a difficult workload for some counselors and that the district needed to include school-stationed law enforcement officers in every assessment.

“It is evident that adequate training on proper threat assessment is still lacking,” Bailey wrote.

Andrea Jones, a parent in Oxford and part of the parent-led group Change4Oxford, formed after the shooting, said the report did not answer many lingering questions for her and other parents, including pressing questions about how the shooting unfolded.

“We still don't have the trust and to me, this report did not restore the trust,” she said.

Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Judge: Victim suit against Oxford Schools, 2 staffers can continue