A state appellate court reversed a jury verdict Monday against the Los Angeles Unified School District in a lawsuit in which the mother of a 6-year-old Long Beach boy who was fatally beaten the day after Christmas 2019 won $30 million in emotional distress damages.
Plaintiff Kenya Taylor, the 42-year-old mother of Dayvon Taylor, maintained the school district negligently hired, retained and supervised her son’s accused killer, Tyler D’Shaun Martin Brand, for an after-school program. In an August 2023 verdict, jurors found the LAUSD 90% at fault and Kenya Taylor the remaining 10%.
Brand was also the boy’s godfather.
On Monday, a three-justice panel of the Second District Court of Appeal ruled that Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Michael Harwin erred when he denied the LAUSD’s post-trial motions to overturn the jury’s verdict. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Rashida Adams, the appeals court found that under the state Education Code the district was immune from liability in Dayvon’s death because the boy was killed in Downey and not on school property.
“Dayvon died off campus and not during any school undertaking,” Adams wrote. “Under these circumstances, LAUSD is statutorily immune from liability.”
The justices sent the case back to Harwin for an entry of judgment in the district’s favor.
In his denial of the LAUSD’s post-trial motion, Harwin noted that because Brand was hired by the district, Kenya Taylor believed he was reliable and so the plaintiff justifiably counted on the district’s opinion. But the LAUSD attorneys maintained the district was immune from plaintiff’s claims because Dayvon’s death not only occurred off-campus, but during a school holiday.
The verdict also was improper because it assigned a “zero percentage of fault to the murderer,” the LAUSD lawyers further argued.
Brand, 26 at the time of the verdict, pleaded no contest in May 2022 in Norwalk Superior Court to second-degree murder in the boy’s death and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office alleged the boy was severely beaten at the defendant’s Downey apartment on Dec. 26, 2019, and died the same day at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. Brand had been caring for him over the holiday break, prosecutors said.
According to the suit, Dayvon attended Normandie Avenue Elementary School’s Beyond the Bell program, where Brand was his supervisor and coach. Before the boy’s death, Brand isolated Dayvon from other students, teachers and other supervisors so he could be alone with the boy, the suit filed in August 2020 alleged.
The district should have known of Brand’s alleged history of abusive conduct with other children and that he was unfit to be working as an elementary school coach or supervisor, according to the suit, which further states that Kenya Taylor has suffered a “substantial loss of assistance, care, comfort, companionship, society, guidance, moral support, love, affection and protection” since her son’s death.
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