What were you doing in early 1984? I was finishing up middle school, and I’m sure there were some people there with whom I did not get along. What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t too late for me to get even with them… by finding someone with much deeper pockets than them, and filing a lawsuit.

In 1984, Fatima Bowles was in kindergarten in Brooklyn, when a boy named “Frank A” threw a block at her from across the room. It hit her in the eye, and from the sound of things, she was legitimately injured: she had to have surgery for a lacerated cornea. Of course, it’s unlikely that kindergartner Frank A had any money, which is probably why Bowles sued… the city of New York.

The complaint? That Bowles’ kindergarten teacher was negligent. She had left the room for a moment to check up on two students who had gone to the bathroom, and a few seconds after she did so, the evil Frank A launched the block. Ms. Zimmerman should have known that because Frank had previously pushed Bowles on the playground and pulled her hair, there was a danger he would injure her.

“The city was on notice about his belligerent behavior and allowed the teacher to go out, leaving the kids alone,” Weinbaum said.

So why are we talking about this now? Apparently Bowles (well, Bowles’ mother; Bowles was only 7) actually filed the lawsuit back in 1985, but her lawyers died somewhere along the way, and nobody noticed.

Although the delay is highly unusual, Bowles said she and her family trusted their lawyers and never asked why the case was moving so slowly.

Ordinarily, failure to prosecute a lawsuit is grounds for dismissal. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the lawyers for the city were negligent in failing to get the case dismissed, and eventually another attorney in Bowles’ old lawyers’ law firm noticed that the file was still active (loosely speaking), and he revived it in 2003. And last week, a judge in New York rejected the city’s motion to dismiss the case, holding that a jury could find that the school was on notice about Frank’s behavior, and hence that the school was negligent in allowing this to happen. Because we all know that schools can prevent kindergartners from roughhousing.

You know, I complain about the slow pace of justice, but I think 23 years may actually be a record. (In all seriousness, note that however much work was done on the case back in the 1980s — probably not much, since Bowles wasn’t deposed until 2006 — it has taken at least four years since Weinbaum started working on it again, and all we’ve established is that the case won’t be dismissed before trial. (Given that the city doesn’t seem to be able to produce Ms. Zimmerman, I suspect they’ll be settling the case shortly — but there are no guarantees, and this could drag on even longer.))

Filed under: schools