CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) – A prep school isn’t liable for the death of a 14-year-old student who was abducted on her way to school in January 2017.
The Estate of Alianna DeFreeze received an adverse ruling from the Ohio Eighth Appellate District on Aug. 27 as it sought to recover from Entrepreneurship Preparatory School Woodland Hills (EPrep).
EPrep filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in the trial court, but it was denied. The appeals court says it should have been granted.
The lawsuit said EPrep did not notify DeFreeze’s family of her absence from school until one of them called the school in the afternoon. EPrep enjoys immunity from such intentional tort claims, the appeals court ruled.
“Given how much of our society, including our public education system, increasingly relies on technology, we cannot hold that a ‘malfunctioning’ parental notification system constitutes a physical defect of the sort envisioned by the legislature,” Judge Raymond Headen wrote.
DeFreeze’s murderer was Christopher Whitaker, who has been sentenced to death. He raped and tortured DeFreeze after abducting her.