RULING SUPPORTS SCHOOL DISTRICT.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

PALMDALE - An appellate court upheld a jury verdict that found Palmdale School District did not owe money to the mother of a Juniper Intermediate School student killed five years ago in a schoolyard fistfight.

Mary Corson had appealed a Los Angeles Superior Court jury's decision in 2002 that Palmdale School District employees were negligent in supervising youngsters as school let out - when the fight occurred outside a classroom - but weren't responsible for 13-year-old Stephan Corson's death.

``(T)here is nothing inherently inconsistent in concluding, as the jury did, that the district was negligent, but that such unspecified negligence (including alleged negligent supervision in failing to control the classroom) was not to any degree the cause of Stephan's death, which resulted outside the classroom from mutual combat initiated by Stephan,'' the ruling said.

The appellate court said the verdict need not be overturned because the judge told the jury to decide if the district was ``the'' cause of death rather than ``a'' cause of death, nor because he refused to give the jury several instructions requested by Mary Corson's attorney about supervision.

The appellate court called ``without merit'' claims that the judge improperly restricted the attorney's questioning of jurors about bias, that jurors engaged in misconduct and irregularities, or that the trial court erred in awarding costs.

Mary Corson filed a lawsuit after school officials rejected her $10 million wrongful death claim.

Her attorney told the Los Angeles jury a teacher failed to prevent a classroom dispute between Stephan and a 14-year-old classmate from escalating into a fistfight in the schoolyard.

The teacher let her students misbehave in class and stayed inside the room when the boys began fighting after class was dismissed, Corson's attorney said.

The Palmdale School District's attorney maintained that the teacher was in control of her class, that Stephan had punched the other boy when both walked out of the classroom, and that within seconds an instructional aide stepped between the boys but couldn't prevent the last two punches.

After the aide intervened, Stephan pushed past her to punch the other boy, who immediately hit back and Stephan fell to the pavement, the district's attorney said.

Stephan Corson's death in 1999 was ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, which said the boy died from damage to his spinal cord caused either by a punch thrown by the classmate or from hitting the ground with his chin.

Los Angeles County prosecutors declined in April 2000 to file charges against the 14-year-old classmate, saying he acted in self-defense in what was termed an ``excusable homicide.''