NORTHAMPTON - A Hampshire Superior Court judge will be asked to decide this month whether the town of South Hadley must release documents related to it settlement with the family of Phoebe Prince.Claiming it’s a matter of public record that has affected the town’s insurance premiums, reporter Emily Bazelon is suing the town for the documents.
Bazelon, who writes for the on-line magazine Slate, said she has been repeatedly rebuffed by the town and its officials in her efforts to access the information.
Town Counsel Edward J. Ryan denied one such request, citing a confidentiality clause in the settlement. All other town officials denied knowledge of the settlement.
Prince, a 15-year-old freshman, hanged herself in her South Hadley home in January of 2010 after what investigators have characterized as a period of intense bullying at South Hadley High School. Her story soon became international news and Prince, who had recently immigrated from Ireland, became a symbol of the tragic effects of bullying.
In July of 2010, Anne O’Brien and Jeremy Prince, Prince’s parents, filed a Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination Complaint against South Hadley alleging that the schools failed to protect Phoebe from discrimination amounting to sexual harassment. They dropped the complaint in November when the two sides settled, but the amount of the settlement was never disclosed.
The Republican and Bazelon both filed public records requests with Ryan and the town, to no avail. While Ryan claimed the information was protected both by the confidentially clause and attorney/client privilege, town officials said they simply did not know how much money South Hadley had paid the family. They argued that because the settlement was paid by Argonaut Insurance, the town’s carrier, it did not involve public money.
In Bazelon’s complaint, however, her lawyer William C. Newman who filed the suit as director of the Western Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, included correspondence indicating that the town’s insurance premiums have increased considerably as a result of the settlement, a burden that falls on South Hadley taxpayers. According to the documents, liability insurance went from $183,962 in 2010 to $206,204 in 2011. Overall, the town’s insurance costs rose from $213,997 to $233,587 over that same period.
Because no one has spelled out exactly how the policy paid the settlement, Newman said he has had to play detective in trying to interpret the laybrinthine document. The general policy for example, includes an “errors and omission” section pertaining specifically to the School Department. The premium for that section, a few thousand dollars, doubled from 2010 to 2011 but it’s not clear if that was the section that was impacted.
“If you look at the pieces of the policy premiums, the bigger one went up significantly in cost after the resolution of the case,” Newman said.
Ryan said Friday, however, that it is erroneous to conclude that the town’s insurance premiums spiked significantly because of the Prince settlement. He offered no further information on the subject.
In her claim, Bazelon also maintains that the confidentiality clause does not exempt the settlement from the public records laws and that South Hadley has no right to withhold the information. The suit further states that attorney/client privilege does not pertain.
Frustrated by her efforts to get information from the town, Bazelon put the matter to the public records division of the Massachusetts Secretary of State. Neither she nor Ryan has heard from that office on the matter.
Ryan said Friday that, unless some authority tells him otherwise, he still believes he is bound by the confidentiality clause from releasing the information. That ruling could come at the Dec. 19 hearing scheduled in Hampshire Superior Court.
“It is my view, and it’s always been my view, that for me to voluntarily release it would violate the spirit and intent of the agreement,” he said.source
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