Posted on 04/09/2017 12:15:28 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
WISN 12 News ✔ @WISN12News
Janesville council approves $75K settlement for former teacher who was drunk on school trip
http://bit.ly/2dGqoPf
7:01 PM - 25 Oct 2016
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It didn’t take long for the other teachers to realize that Maria Caya, one of the chaperons on a school field trip to a bowling alley, was seriously drunk.
As elementary-school students bowled in June 2013 in Janesville, Wis., Caya tried to order more drinks from the bar, city officials said.
At one point, Caya disappeared, worrying school officials. They found her in the bathroom, passed out.
Alarmed, a staff member drove Caya to the hospital, where doctors said her blood alcohol level was 0.27 — more than three times the legal limit to drive in Wisconsin.
She later told doctors she had been drinking since early that morning.
Predictably, Caya was not a schoolteacher for much longer: She resigned a month later, according to ABC-affiliate WKOW.
But in what some are calling a maddening twist, Janesville City Council has now voted to pay Caya $75,000.
Her blood alcohol level is at the heart of her case. Caya argued in a lawsuit that her BAC was private medical information that the police department never should have released. The number was mentioned in a police report, then written about by a local newspaper.
Officers routinely record BACs in criminal cases, such as DUI traffic stops. But Caya was never charged or convicted. Investigators were only able to get her BAC from the hospital.
The settlement, approved Monday, ends three years of legal wrangling following Caya’s resignation.
But it has drawn the ire of critics who say the city of almost 64,000 about 45 miles southwest of Madison is choosing legal expedience over taking on even a small amount of risk.
[Second-grade substitute teacher arrested after principal discovers she’s drunk in class]
Jens Jorgensen, the only council member who voted against the settlement, said the city should have gone to trial.
Jens Jorgensen, Janesville City Council Vice President. (Photo courtesy of Jens Jorgensen.) Jens Jorgensen, Janesville City Council Vice President. (Courtesy of Jens Jorgensen.) “I have 100 percent confidence a jury would make the right decision,” Jorgensen told The Washington Post, adding that he’d spent a week talking to constituents about whether the city should fight in court. “Not bringing it to court is just giving her an easy $75,000.”
Caya couldn’t be reached for comment. Her attorney, Christopher Stawski, could not be reached; a woman who answered the phone at Stawski’s law firm said he was out of the office and had no comment.
Caya, who had taught at Washington Elementary School in the Janesville school district, filed the lawsuit in Rock County Circuit Court in August 2014, more than a year after she resigned.
The suit makes no mention of her being drunk on the day of the trip to the bowling alley.
It says she “became ill” during the field trip and was taken to the emergency room.
The doctors and nurses who treated Caya “conducted various diagnostic tests and provided counseling,” according to the suit.
They also called police “to report suspected child neglect.”
Doctors and nurses spoke with a police officer, who filed the report that included her BAC.
A local newspaper reporter found the report and wrote an article, according to the suit, and the story of a drunk teacher supervising students spread quickly.
“After the Janesville Gazette published the initial article on June 8, 2013, its story regarding Caya became national and international news,” the suit says. The report of child neglect was “reported throughout the United States in virtually every form of media including newspaper, internet, television, social media and talk radio.”
But Caya’s lawsuit said the hospital acted “without legal authority and without any factual basis to suspect that any child participating in the field trip was neglected or harmed in any way.”
[Drunk mother forces 9-year-old daughter to drive truck with infant inside, police say]
In a statement, the school district told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that “student health or safety was not compromised, due to eight other district employees present on the field trip.”
Caya was never charged with a crime.
Local Headlines newsletter Daily headlines about the Washington region. Sign up Her lawsuit a year after the incident sought $5.5 million in damages — a figure that worried city officials and their insurance company, Jorgensen said.
“If the City does not approve this proposed settlement that is recommended by our insurance carriers, then the City would be liable for all damages that the Court or jury could eventually award to the Plaintiff,” the city staff’s recommendation to the council said.
But Jorgensen worried that Janesville’s conservative choice in Caya’s case could make people more likely to sue the city in the future, knowing it will be an easy payday.
Potential litigants believe “if you do this, there’s a chance that you would continue to do this in the future,” he said. “Someone else can file a lawsuit whenever they slip on the sidewalk.”
If she gets the money, they might as well send the check direct to the liquor store and cut out the middle man.
If she's going to show up drunk in full view of everyone, it's no secret.
This HIPPA stuff is total nonsense in many areas.
This is one. Her drunkenness is not a *medical* issue.
It was her own stupid choice and since she showed up drunk to work and is theoretically responsible for the care of the students under her, the parents have the right to know her condition for a non-medical, non-health related issue.
Teddy Kennedy’s rules for determining if you’re a drunk
You’re addressed by three separate liquor store owners as “the guy who paid for my houseboat.”
Your career is interfering with your drinking.
You have a reserved parking space at four different liquor stores.
The first thing you thought when you woke up yesterday was, “Wow, look at all that gum stuck under the bar!”
Your liver enters itself in a Tough Man competition.
Before you go out each night you consult a psychic hotline to determine which bartenders will be pouring strong.
You’re shocked and confounded to discover they actually sell Coke without Jack Daniels.
You don’t recognize the difference between “waking up” and “coming to.”
You don’t sniff the cork, you chew it.
You like a splash of coffee in your morning whiskey.
You’re kept awake at night by the sound of your liver crying.
2 for 1 is your lucky number.
You always drink Irish Coffee for breakfast because it contains all four adult food groups: fat, sugar, caffeine and alcohol.
Your bartender never has to ask, “Do you want another?”
You come home sober and your dog bites you.
You never drink anything stronger than vodka before breakfast.
If it weren’t for the olives in your martinis, you’d starve to death.
When your spirits get low, you use a straw.
You drink a bottle of wine everyday. Unless you’re sick. Then you drink two.
You woke up feeling really strange, then realized you didn’t have a hangover.
You know the heartbreak of watching the bartender dump the spill tray.
You call the bartending academy, inquiring as to what they do with their mistakes.
You give directions with liquor stores and bars as the major landmarks, i.e., “You’ll pass Argonaut’s Liquors on the left and Scooter’s on the right, then turn right on the street between the Satire Lounge and the Lion’s Lair, then continue until you see the tree that looks like a huge martini glass.”
Crickey .27 is fally downy close to needing a stomach pump level
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Yes...
I was a ‘professional’ drunk for about 35 years and the ‘best’ I could officially reach was .29 and I was laughing and joking with the Police that had stopped me for a minor offense.
THEY didn’t believe the reading but I probably shouldn’t have commented that I was getting better at BAC level.
That happened in 1990 and not a drop of alcohol has knowingly passed my lips since.
“...her blood alcohol level was 0.27 — more than three times the legal limit to drive in Wisconsin.”
She must not have been born here in Wisconsin. Most of us register that at breakfast. ;)
This is ridiculous, but I can see them wanting to settle to just make her go away.
I agree; if she’s this much of a lush, she’ll be picked up on a DUI in the near future. Probably on her way to the bank to cash her check, LOL!
Let’s just hope she doesn’t harm anyone else along the way.
When the government releases your private medical information to the MSM,
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Granted but the employer should have been notified BUT where does the school board come off ‘protecting’ her?
I realize it was a CYA so the parents wouldn’t sue the school, but the report almost leads one to believe the school board was ‘ok’ with the situation.
If you’re a hardcore alky it’s just another day at the races.
CC
Not if you do it every day.
She was not charged.
The police went into a hospital, obtained a patient’s private medical records and gave those records to the media.
The city got off cheap.
Why didn’t I get field trips like this when I was a kid? I was always having to go to museums, art galleries and such.
Paul Ryan’s neck of the woods, second story in as many days.
Spring has sprung. Teachers get drunk, whack jobs steal guns, the Speaker of the House reveals he did not spend the long winter formulating a replacement for Obamacare.
Sorry, you’re wrong. She is a public school teacher charged with the safety and well being of those in her charge, on a sanctioned school field trip on the taxpayers dime. Parents of those kids would demand, and EXPECT, that the ones looking after their kids off school grounds, be responsible.
This so-called “Teacher” is not responsible. And the town should not have to pay for her irresponsible actions.
THAT - is criminal in my book, and I don’t even have kids!
The morel of the story:
Don’t truffle with our emotions.
You may want to hit the abuse button and ask the mods to edit
your post as Washington Post articles must be excerpted.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts
No crime?
Endangering minors in her care?
Public drunkenness?
At the time the police gave her medical information to the media, she was a private citizen and she was not under arrest or facing charges.
The police can’t do that.
She’s a public employee charged with the safety of minors. I assume things have changed all that much in the decades since I was a kid and parental consent was needed for this field trip.
That consent comes with certain expectations of the parents in regards to the safety of their children.
Acts of God and traffic accidents are one thing; falling down drunk by one of the chaperones IS NOT!
Have= haven’t changed...
Well the fifth grade class was on a field trip to the dairy farm to do cow tipping. Since they were overbooked, the bowling alley was the next best thing to keep them buggers active. /s
I had a “friend” who was a serious alcoholic. We took him in to the hospital .43. After he got out of rehab, he went back to drinking, after six months, we had to take him back again .49. He was walking and talking both times (but obviously drunk). The doctor said he probably averaged a .2 or so when he woke up in the morning, before he had his morning pick me up.
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