The family of Brayden Callahan, the 12-year-old boy who was fatally struck by a school bus in Rockland on Nov. 21, is taking legal action against Regional School District 13.
Attorney Stephen Smith is representing Brayden's parents, Shane Callahan and Kelley Morse. Smith's law firm filed a notice of claim on Nov. 26 informing RSU 13's Superintendent John McDonald that the family is seeking $10 million in monetary damages for failure to supervise the bus driver and the gross negligence in which the bus driver operated the school bus.
"I said $10 million on the notice of claim," Smith said. "It might as well have been a billion dollars. The life of child is precious and priceless."
Smith says Brayden's family doesn't care about the money; what his parents really want is for this not to happen to another child.
"Something is wrong. Something is amiss. Whether it's the standards that we have in selecting school bus drivers, whether it's systemic failures to really weed out bad situations, whether it's a failure to train — I don't know what it is. The investigation is ongoing and early," said Smith. "But when you have two deaths of very young children in a month, when we haven't seen deaths in years from a school bus ... something is wrong. And we intend to get to the bottom of it."
In a Dec. 16 press release, the firm states that "the matter involves serious allegations related to public safety, institutional responsibility, and the protection of children — concerns that affect not just one family, but many Maine families and communities."
Because RSU 13 is a governmental entity, it's protected by a state law called the Maine Tort Claims Act, which limits liability and caps compensation at $400,000 for occurrences of gross negligence.
Smith says RSU 13 now has 120 days to respond to the claim. If it's denied, the family has the right to sue.
A second child, 5-year-old kindergartener Simon Gonzalez, was killed by a school bus earlier this week in Standish.
