Looking for lawyers

ac70

Hello, I am looking for a lawyer who treats case of school bullying in Galway but I can't find it.

Any suggestion?

Thanks

Rachiee

Its a bit unclear what you are looking for do you want a solicitor who is willing to represent you in a civil case? If so what is the claim? And who is your claim against the individual or the school. When you have approached solicitors what have they said? they will advise if you actually have a claim or not. If several solicitors are refusing to take the case perhaps you dont have a claim that can succeed.
Unfortunately the law isnt always about whats right or wrong its what is legislated for, what theres precedence of and what can be proven.

Mr. Incognito

There is a legal forum here but soliciting of clients is banned.

Bullying in schools is best sorted out in the school through the principal not the courts.

ac70

I just want to meet a lawyer that can give me some suggestions for my case. I have some evidence that my daughter has been bullied but I want to talk to some lawyer to understand how I can proceed. I have already tried with the principal and the career guidance of the school but they didn't bother.

frash

Tulsa might be able to advise you

Steviesol

Hi,

It's a very tricky situation and the schools do their upmost to protect themselves.

They will have a procedure, which you will need to follow before any legalities can take place .

They usually are :

You write to the school
You meet with teacher . If still not happy
Meet with principal . If still not happy
Board of management discuss . If still not happy
Meet with chair of board of management. If still not happy.
Then legal route.

Check your schools policies.

Best of luck. Take photos , write everything down , bring someone into any meeting with you.

dudara

Moved to Legal discussion. You can get general advice there but you will not be able to get a solicitor recommendation.

dudara

ac70

The school polices!?!?!? ahahah.. They sent my daughter to make a psycological test !!!!! You know ... This system is very unfair. The only way to get some help here, is to ask to the school, so if the school doesn't care of your problem it simply ignores you. So, the school is the first to bullying you. They use big words when they say that "they take bullying seriously" or "0 tolerance" but then they make time pass and the school finishes. After the school ended, my daughter had a chat with one of those bullies (on Snapchat, so it is all recorded) who confessed that there were people that did all they could to ditch her by talking behind her back. My daughter has just finished the leaving cert but the damages remain. We have to live with them!!! My daughter has to live with them!!! So, since I can't get help from anyone, I gonna find my own way to get the justice that my daughter deserve. Thanks

Peregrinus

If your daughter has just finished the leaving cert, presumably she has now left school? If that's the case, there is (a) nothing the school can do at this point, and (b) no benefit to you or your daughter in suing the school. What remedy do you want? You can look for money, but even if you get money that will not make your daughter not have been bullied, and it will do nothing to remedy any injury your daughter may have suffered at the hands of the bullies.

Concentrate on what matters here - your daughter's welfare, health and resilience. Suing the school will not help these in any way at all; it's a huge distraction.

ac70

MONEY???? I'm looking for justice!!! this bullies have to pay for what they have done!!!

Isn't bullying a very bad thing??? If so, why it should disappear when the school is finished???
So you are saying that since the school is finish we can forget everything and be happy again??

That's what the bully said to my daughter because he felt guilty!!!!

I was there when my daughter came back from school every afternoon crying!!!

Obviously you don't know what you are talking about.

Mod
Poster Ac70, pls be civil on this forum. Peregrinus is a frequent poster here. imho (s) he does know what (s)he discusses

Peregrinus

Are you intending to sue the bullies, or the school, or both?

And what order, exactly, will you be asking the court to make?

ac70

If I knew I would not be writing in this forum. My request, since the beginning, of this thread was:

"I just want to meet a lawyer that can give me some suggestions for my case. I have some evidence that my daughter has been bullied but I want to talk to some lawyer to understand how I can proceed."

Peregrinus

I don't think a lawyer can advise you unless he knows what you want. His job is to advise you whether you can get what you want and, if you can, how to do it. But he can't start on that unless he knows what you want.

What you want, you've already told us, is "justice". Can you describe, in reasonably concrete terms, what justice would look like to you?

You've said that you want "the bullies to pay for what they have done". Again, can you suggest how they might do this?

On the bright side, one of the bullies apparently feels guilty for what they have done. That's a start. Is that the kind of justice that you are looking for? If all of the bullies came to a point where they realised they were at fault, and expressed contrition, would that restore the balance of justice for you, or do you think something more is needed?

ac70

We want to know:
- who started it
- who was involved
- WHY???

Nobody, except my wife and me, believed to my daughter. Also my daughter had dubs that it was her fault. She thought she was doing something wrong (can you believe it!!). Now there is an evidence that somebody hated my daughter so much to make her feel: alone, insecure and guilty for something she never did. Now we (but mostly my daughter) want to know WHY?? How can somebody be so bad???

Of course the bully in chat said she was sorry, but still when my daughter asked her why and who was involved, she said that the others were still her friends. This was again unbelievably offensive. She was still picking "her bullies friends" instead of my daughter. All this, should show you the real "sorry" she felt.

How would you react to this situation???

nim1bdeh38l2cw

ac70 wrote: »

How would you react to this situation???

I wouldn't be looking for a solicitor anyway.

ac70

So your option is to suffer in silent without disturb anyone ...

WOW ...

Steviesol

ac70 wrote: »

So your option is to suffer in silent without disturb anyone ...

WOW ...

You have to understand, a lawyer is the last think you need in this .

You need to follow the school procedures as I mentioned above . When you have jumped through all those hoops, and no solution is found then it gets down to legalities.

Otherwise you go to court and the school will say we have a procedure in place , this family did not follow it, and it will be thrown out.

Best of luck.

Peregrinus

ac70 wrote: »

We want to know:
- who started it
- who was involved
- WHY???

Nobody, except my wife and me, believed to my daughter. Also my daughter had dubs that it was her fault. She thought she was doing something wrong (can you believe it!!). Now there is an evidence that somebody hated my daughter so much to make her feel: alone, insecure and guilty for something she never did. Now we (but mostly my daughter) want to know WHY?? How can somebody be so bad???

Of course the bully in chat said she was sorry, but still when my daughter asked her why and who was involved, she said that the others were still her friends. This was again unbelievably offensive. She was still picking "her bullies friends" instead of my daughter. All this, should show you the real "sorry" she felt.

How would you react to this situation???

Certainly not by suing the school, which is very unlikely to result in answers to any of the questions that you raise.

From your questions, it seems that what you are really after here is understanding. What were the motivations of those involved? Why did events unfold the way they did? What might have been done differently so that things might have had a better or healthier outcome?

These are good questions but, if you think about it, a confrontationa, adversarial process like a lawsuit is not a good mechanism for arriving at answers. Particularly if it's a lawsuit against the school, which may have no better information that you or your daughter do about who was involved or why they acted the way they did.

I think the only way to pursue answers to these questions is try try to engage directly with the people involved - and, furthemore, to engage with them in a way which pursues reconciliation, not judgment. If you attack them, they will become defensive, and that's exactly the wrong dynamic for getting them to open up and engage in a bit of critical self-examination. One of the bullies has apparently been open enough to approach your daughter and admit to feeling guilty; that's a good start. There's an opportunity to build on that through futher engagement, but its crucial not to create the impression that what you are looking for is any kind of revenge or retribution, so that the person concerned simply clams up. Do not, do not, do NOT involve lawyers in the process. (And I say this as a practicing lawyer.)

If what you're after is understanding, another avenue might be to explore/research the phenomenon of adolescent bullying in general - it's a fairly well-studied field. Even if the bullies in this case refuse to engage with you, from general study of the problem you might learn abut patterns, dynamics, motivations, etc that you recognise as having been at work in your daughter's case, and this will give you some context within which to understand and come to terms with what happened to your daughter.

GhostyMcGhost

ac70 wrote: »

We want to know:
- who started it
- who was involved
- WHY???

Answers that a solicitor won't be able to guarantee or provide

Honestly, it's a counsellor not a solicitor you need

You're only tormenting yourself if you keep on going down the path your on

Fuguestate

You won't get justice by suing the school. I've been working in a law firm for the past three years and civil cases rarely feel like justice being
served. They are prolonged, often exhausting and expensive processes, involving compromise and possibly judgement going against you. I'm not a lawyer, but I would caution anyone against initiating proceedings unless they absolutely have to.

My own personal feeling is that you and your daughter would be better served by visiting a counsellor, so you can talk through your frustrations and eventually move on to brighter things.

Eggs For Dinner

Surprised at the comments here by some, when the OP is just looking for a route to take action against a school who they feel, failed to protect their child while in their care. If it was me, I'd be doing the same and it's not about money. I'd be looking for those responsible to face consequences and, more importantly, make sure no other child had to endure the same

Fakediamond

A lot of youth workers are trained in restorative justice practice. Would you consider contacting your local youth service to see if they could facilitate a meeting between all parties, with a view to getting some closure for your daughter.

Does your daughter want you to pursue this? Because if she doesn’t, you are further traumatizing her by keeping it alive and being so angry. She might just want to move on, or to get some counselling for herself and to learn how to deal with these situations in the future. School is not the only place where bullies operate you know.

A school has a duty of care to its students. It's possible the school failed in this duty, or that the schools policies and practices are inadequate. Contrary to the others, I think your daughter may have some sort of case, though I doubt there would be much monetary reward.

Personally I can't stand bullying and can't stand the turn a blind eye attitude to it that exists in Ireland.

Samuel T. Cogley

Deleted User wrote: »

A school has a duty of care to its students. It's possible the school failed in this duty, or that the schools policies and practices are inadequate. Contrary to the others, I think your daughter may have some sort of case, though I doubt there would be much monetary reward.

Personally I can't stand bullying and can't stand the turn a blind eye attitude to it that exists in Ireland.

Negligence law has wide lattitude in regard to public policy exceptions, if there was ever an area for same to be applied it's this.

Samuel T. Cogley

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Negligence law has wide lattitude in regard to public policy exceptions, if there was ever an area for same to be applied it's this.

Without knowing the facts how can you say? For all you know the school was extraordinarily lax in their response etc.

Let's say you knew the school was extremely negligent in their care, would you think a case could be winnable? I don't see why not, the public policy consideration isn't there to protect bad behaviour.

Peregrinus

If the school was negligent, and if injury resulted, sure, there's a remedy which at this point could only be monetary damages. Obviously, we've no way of knowing from the facts given whether the school was negligent or, if they were, whether it could be proven. And I think Samuel was correct to say that the courts tend to allow schools a fairly wider margin when it comes to the pastoral care of pupils; a school won't be found to have been negligent merely because a court is persuaded that it might have handled things differently.

But, yeah, we can hypothesize. Suppose the evidence showed that the school had a clear policy on bullying and on the management of cases of bullying, but completely failed to apply it when this instance was actually drawn to their attention? I think the school would be in a sticky position, negligence-wise.

But I keep coming back to the fact that the only remedy that can be granted at this point is monetary damages, and that will basically do nothing to repair the (I don't doubt, very real) damage done. So you could invest an awful lot of time, money and emotional energy in running the proceedings with, even on the best scenario, very limited benefit resulting.

Peregrinus

Peregrinus wrote: »

If the school was negligent, and if injury resulted, sure, there's a remedy which at this point could only be monetary damages. Obviously, we've no way of knowing from the facts given whether the school was negligent or, if they were, whether it could be proven. And I think Samuel was correct to say that the courts tend to allow schools a fairly wider margin when it comes to the pastoral care of pupils; a school won't be found to have been negligent merely because a court is persuaded that it might have handled things differently.

But, yeah, we can hypothesize. Suppose the evidence showed that the school had a clear policy on bullying and on the management of cases of bullying, but completely failed to apply it when this instance was actually drawn to their attention? I think the school would be in a sticky position, negligence-wise.

But I keep coming back to the fact that the only remedy that can be granted at this point is monetary damages, and that will basically do nothing to repair the (I don't doubt, very real) damage done. So you could invest an awful lot of time, money and emotional energy in running the proceedings with, even on the best scenario, very limited benefit resulting.

There is another benefit that I wouldn't fully discount, you could be instrumental is changing an situation to ensure that no one else would have to suffer as you (or your family) did. We are inevitably going to see more litigation in an academic context imo, though that's a different discussion.

Peregrinus

Deleted User wrote: »

There is another benefit that I wouldn't fully discount, you could be instrumental is changing an situation to ensure that no one else would have to suffer as you (or your family) did. We are inevitably going to see more litigation in an academic context imo, though that's a different discussion.

That's true, and it might be very public-spirited of someone to pursue an action for this purpose.

But remember the OP's purpose is to get some understanding of what happened, why it happened and who was involved. It seems to me that suing the school is not going to be a particularly effective way of getting answers to these questions; the school quite possibly knows even less about what happened and why than the OP and her daughter do.

Peregrinus

Peregrinus wrote: »

That's true, and it might be very public-spirited of someone to pursue an action for this purpose.

But remember the OP's purpose is to get some understanding of what happened, why it happened and who was involved. It seems to me that suing the school is not going to be a particularly effective way of getting answers to these questions; the school quite possibly knows even less about what happened and why than the OP and her daughter do.

Yep, though again, we don't know what the school knows etc. My point was merely that I don't think it would be impossible to run such a case, depending on the facts etc.

As an aside, I can't begin to imagine the horror show that must be teenage whatsapps groups (separate to the schools issue, but a potentially electronic record of bullying etc).

Samuel T. Cogley

Deleted User wrote: »

Yep, though again, we don't know what the school knows etc. My point was merely that I don't think it would be impossible to run such a case, depending on the facts etc.

As an aside, I can't begin to imagine the horror show that must be teenage whatsapps groups (separate to the schools issue, but a potentially electronic record of bullying etc).

Not impossible no, but the 'flood gates' issue is a strong one.

Samuel T. Cogley

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Not impossible no, but the 'flood gates' issue is a strong one.

Sure, but we agree could be done. With electronic evidence etc it's probably easier now than ever to actually prove bullying occurred etc.

I fully take the point re damages but it's an interesting topic. When does normal adolescent turn into bullying etc. What duty does a school have? What duty do parents have (particularly if they provide phones to their kids etc.)