Boys and Girls | McDougall LawFirm, LLC | Beaufort, South Carolina

The Beaufort County School District will pay about $4.6 million under a settlement reached last month in six of seven lawsuits related to a former Coosa Elementary School teacher who molested at least nine students, district officials said Wednesday.
Details of the settlement have been sealed under court order, including the identities of the students and their families. All seven cases, however, were filed on behalf of or by students who were molested by music teacher Phillip Underwood-Sheppard between 1999 and 2002.
Underwood-Sheppard, 49, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2003 for molesting at least nine students ages 6 to 13, some of whom he forced to perform sexual acts on him in his music room office. At the time of his sentencing, he had been a teacher for 17 years. He is serving his sentence in Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in Bishopville.
The school district's Columbia insurance company, S.C. School Boards Insurance Trust, settled a seventh lawsuit in May. Of the remaining six lawsuits, the district owes about $4.6 million, and the insurance company, so far, has offered about $300,000 to cover the costs, according to a district statement released Tuesday night.
The school district filed suit Wednesday in the Court of Common Pleas against S.C. School Boards Insurance Trust, seeking to recover the cost of the settlement, said Frank Holleman, an attorney at the Wyche Law Firm in Greenville who is representing the district.
"We think that we are owed more," school board Chairman Fred Washington Jr. said. "We don't interpret the policy the way that they are ... and we think we have a pretty good case. We wouldn't be pursuing it if we didn't."
The district claims the insurance company bunched all seven suits together as one claim and has not covered the district under all the provisions in its policy. The district is requesting a jury trial and believes, under the policy, that it would be covered for up to $5.5 million to settle the lawsuits, though the jury would ultimately determine the award.
Officials at the S.C. School Boards Association, which offers the insurance company's coverage to its member districts -- like Beaufort -- could not be reached for comment.
If the district has to pay the majority of the settlement and did not use money it had on hand, Chief Financial Officer Phyllis White said the county would need to raise taxes on non-owner-occupied homes and businesses by as much as 2.7 mills to cover the settlement. Property tax reform passed last year by the General Assembly removed school operating taxes from owner-occupied homes' tax bills and replaced it with a state a sales tax increase.
Although the state has capped how high taxes can be raised, White said if the district sought a tax increase to meet a court order, such as a financial settlement, it could exceed that cap per state law.
The school district spends more than $1.2 million each year on liability and property insurance, White said.

6-7-07 The Beaufort Gazette: Schools settle molestation lawsuits for 4.6 million

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