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ACK obtained summary judgment in Henderson, et al. v. Evans, et al. in favor of the Board of Education of Baltimore County. The case arose from the May 2004 shooting at Randallstown High School in Baltimore County. The shooting occurred in the school's parking lot after a charity basketball game, which was not historically well-attended by students and supervised by at least two dozen faculty members. After the game, a student came to the school and, after a brief fight, randomly fired into a crowd of students exiting the game. The plaintiff was shot and paralyzed. The paralyzed student and his mother sued the school principal, the school board, the county police department, two police officers and the shooters in Circuit Court of Maryland for Baltimore County for $20 million in compensatory damages.
Plaintiffs claimed that police officers should have been present at an afterschool charity basketball game to provide additional security. The Board argued that school administrators were not on notice that police officers would be needed at the game, citing the shooter's lack of a history of violence, the police officers' determination earlier in the day that the shooter was not a threat, the charity game's uneventful nature and its history of low student turnout. Granting summary judgment, the court ruled that the board was not on reasonable notice of the heightened need for security to prevent this type of risk of harm.
