Kristin Smart's family files lawsuit against Cal Poly
SAN LUIS OBISPO – The family of murder victim Kristin Smart has filed a lawsuit against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
The lawsuit lists three complaints against the school: negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and wrongful death.
Smart, a Stockton native, was a freshman at Cal Poly when she disappeared after an off-campus party in May 1996.
A former classmate of Smart, Paul Flores, was eventually convicted of her murder in 2022. Paul's father Ruben Flores was found not guilty of being an accessory after the fact by a separate jury. Her body has yet to be found.
The lawsuit against Cal Poly comes after the school issued a public apology in 2023 for how it first handled the investigation into Smart's disappearance. As alleged in the lawsuit, Kristin's friends and family quickly reported her missing – but campus police wanted to wait until after Memorial Day Weekend to take a missing persons report.
"The university could and should have prevented Kristin's murder and the university could and should have acted much differently in the wake of her disappearance," the family's lawyer, Marc Lewis, said.
Along with detailing Flores' history of incidents after Kristin's disappearance, the lawsuit also alleges that Cal Poly could have prevented her murder if they properly investigated and disciplined him after a series of harassment incidents reported to the school.
"There were a number of reports of his abuse against women years leading to 1996. And then the failures after the fact," Lewis said.
Lewis said the school didn't pursue a missing person case in a timely manner, didn't interview witnesses in a timely manner and didn't search Paul Flores' dorm room until 16 days after Kristin disappeared.
"Cal Poly's failures are indefensible, and it must be held accountable to prevent this cycle of callous negligence from ever occurring again," the lawsuit surmises.
Smart's family is seeking monetary damages from the school.
"They just want justice in whatever form that takes and they want the university to take responsibility," Lewis said.
"There is no question that Cal Poly failed our daughter, Kristin Smart, in multiple ways before and after her tragic murder by Paul Flores. Had the university acted properly, conducted a thorough investigation into Flores' past concerning behavior, and implemented appropriate disciplinary measures, Kristin would likely still be alive today," the Smart family said in a statement.
Lewis said the family was not aware of the extent of Cal Poly's mishandlings until after the public apology in May last year.
Cal Poly hasn't commented on the lawsuit as of this writing.
"I mean what they're saying is that government entities shouldn't review their actions in the past and maybe find that they may have made a mistake or something like that," legal expert Jeffery Kravitz said. "The failure to protect kicked in then the harm started then that later the University said we should have done 'x,' that's not the tort, that doesn't make sense. They knew they were harmed earlier."
Kravitz is skeptical the family can win against the University because so much time has passed since Kristin Smart's disappearance.
The family of University of Utah student Lauren McCluskey sued the school when she was shot and killed on campus in 2018. The lawsuit, filed less than a year after the murder, led to a settlement with the school of $13.5 million.
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