The Corona del Mar (Calif.) School District has agreed to pay a former local football player $31 million to settle a lawsuit over a fall on the school's practice field that the player's attorney say resulted in a traumatic brain injury.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Emanuel “Manny” Garcia was 15 years old when he was injured on March 9, 2021, after falling during practice on natural turf fields that weren’t maintained by the district.
Although Garcia was wearing a helmet when he fell, he suffered a “life-altering brain bleed resulting in a traumatic brain injury with severe cognitive defects and emotional harms."
“It was a very scary injury,” attorney Jesse Creed said in an interview with the Daily Pilot. “Manny was in a coma. His GPA dropped dramatically afterward, and he generally became a special education student.”
Although he struggled, Garcia managed to graduate in June along with his peers at Corona del Mar.
Attorneys allege that the school district failed to adequately maintain the practice fields after receiving repeated warnings from coaches in multiple sports of the dangerous conditions and increased risk of head injuries.
“The warnings came from every nook and cranny of the district,” Creed said. “They came from coaches in football, soccer and lacrosse. They came every year, they were in writing, they were verbal. Warnings were communicated to the principal — they were credible, they were consistent, and they were clear.”
Representatives for the school district responded to the 2022 complaint, saying their client “denies that plaintiff suffered damages in any sum.”
“At the time of the accident referred to in plaintiff’s complaint, the plaintiff was negligent or at fault and failed to use that degree of care and caution which a reasonably prudent person would have used under the same or similar circumstances,” attorneys from McCune & Harber wrote in a September 2022 response.
“Over the years, we have made substantial improvements to our fields and athletic facilities, and we remain dedicated to their ongoing maintenance,” write Newport-Mesa Unified spokesperson Annette Franco wrote in an email. “Additionally, we have completed numerous projects to enhance the quality of our athletic spaces and will continue these efforts to ensure the success and safety of our student athletes.”
Lawyers for Garcia produced evidence to the contrary, including a 2016 email from Corona del Mar lacrosse coach G.W. Mix to then principal Kathy Scott and former athletic director Don Grable.
“I wanted to reach out and express my deep concerns for the current condition of our athletics field on our campus,” the coach wrote in the email. “Frankly, the surface on which we are asking our student-athletes to practice and compete on a daily basis is bordering on unplayable. Our fields have steadfastly become a safety concern, a liability issue and an extremely poor representation of our school.”
Creed called unregulated standards for youth sports fields one of the “silent dangers in California field sports.”
“There’s a lot of research about how to maintain fields to protect athletes, including our children,” he said. “The district had even become aware, as a result of parent complaints about those standards, and they did nothing.”
