(Source: MIRS.news, Published Fri., Sept. 6, 2024) The Michigan Court of Appeals will decide whether Oxford schools and its employees are entitled to governmental immunity in lawsuits arising out of the 2021 shooting at Oxford High School that left four students dead.

Friday, the panel heard from Christopher Desmond, who represents the victims’ families, arguing that Oakland County Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Brennan was wrong in ruling that the shooter was the proximate cause of the students’ injuries.

Brennan’s March 2023 ruling dismissed civil lawsuits against the school district and employees after she held they were entitled to governmental immunity.

Desmond argued that the way the lower court applied the Governmental Tort Liability Act “is unconstitutional.” He also argued that if the victims had been private school students the analytical framework the court used today wouldn’t apply.

“There wouldn’t be a debate about whether my clients had a remedy,” Desmond said. “There wouldn’t be a debate about whether or not the school officials who engaged in the exact same conduct as these school officials, would be held liable under a negligent standard . . .

"Our clients have been denied the equal protection of the law consistently throughout this case.”

Ken Chapie, who represents Oxford, did not give an oral argument, but when Judge Michael Kelly asked about the proximate cause issue, Chapie said it means the “most direct cause” of the shooting.

“The person who is the shooter is the one most immediate, direct legal cause,” Chapie said, quoting another court decision. “They have breached the ultimate legal duty of another person by intentionally committing murder.”

Desmond argued the legal concepts and facts of the case are complex, and it’s too simple to say there is no question the shooter is the proximate cause. 

“I don’t think that there’s any world frankly in which the shooter, under Robinson (v. City of Detroit), can be considered the proximate cause in this case,” he told the panel.

The court held in Robinson that police officers in pursuit of an underage driver operating a vehicle recklessly were immune from liability for injuries caused to the driver’s passengers because the driver was the cause of the injuries.

Appeals Judge Kirsten Kelly arguably brushed that argument off, instead focusing on Desmond’s argument about foreseeability, calling it “a legit one.”

Oxford sophomore Ethan Crumbley, then 15, was convicted of fatally shooting four students and injuring eight others in November 2021.

Crumbley was sentenced in December to life in prison without the chance for parole for terrorism causing death and four counts of murder.

Crumbley’s parents became the first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting and were sentenced to prison in April.