Valencia High Hazing Suit Advances

A federal judge, comparing the danger posed by teenagers to that of a “loose dog,” has ruled that a lawsuit alleging that senior football players at Valencia High School in Los Lunas hazed younger players can go forward.

A parent identified as C.H. filed the lawsuit on behalf of her son, a member of the varsity football team, based on an incident in the fall of 2010. The Los Lunas Schools board of education, the principal and assistant football coaches are named as defendants.

The lawsuit alleges three seniors attacked R.H. after practice when all players were in the locker room. They allegedly held him down while physically and sexually battering him.

The defense sought to have the complaint dismissed, claiming immunity under the state Tort Claims Act because there were insufficient factual allegations to sustain the claim.

U.S. District Judge James O. Browning said in the opinion filed Friday that the allegations in the complaint go beyond negligent supervision and adequately allege that the defendants knew or should have known of the dangerous conditions in part because of the widespread publicity about the 2008 hazing attacks of multiple members of the Las Vegas high school football team.

The parent’s lawsuit contends other players were similarly attacked, two of the assistant coaches were parents of players involved, coaches were present in another area of the locker room when the attack occurred, and Los Lunas officials failed to educate the team about hazing even though the Las Vegas events put them on notice that hazing could be danger.

“Football coaches read sports pages and know what is going on with other football teams that are highly publicized,” Browning said, adding that he could infer that Los Lunas coaches would have known about the Las Vegas football incident. “…When they hear of trouble, it is reasonable to expect coaches to confront it.”

Browning compared the facts of the lawsuit to others in which the New Mexico Supreme Court has decided that immunity was waived based on the creation of unsafe circumstances on a property. In one case, a lawsuit against Santa Fe County involving a dog bite at county-owned public housing was allowed to proceed after the court found that loose-running dogs could represent an unsafe condition.

“A teenager, like a loose dog, is not an obvious danger, but given the right circumstances a defendant may have reason to know or suspect that the loose dog presents a dangerous condition. … The senior football players may qualify as a dangerous condition of the property, because, ‘under the right circumstances,’ high school football players ‘could represent an unsafe condition’ and threaten the safety of other students,” the opinion says.

No trial date is set in the case.
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal