Family, school board reach settlement

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (WSVN) -- A nearly $2 million settlement has been reached in the lawsuit against a South Florida school board concerning the stabbing death of a Coral Gables Senior High School student.

The family of Juan Carlos Rivera filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Miami-Dade County School District, after Rivera was fatally stabbed by another student, Andy Rodriguez, following a confrontation between the two, in Sept. 2009.

This past August, a jury convicted Rodriguez of second-degree murder.

Todd Michaels, the attorney for Rivera's family, announced Friday that the victim's family had reached a settlement with Miami-Dade County Schools for $1.875 million.

"The fight went on long enough that if the school had been properly staffed and if the resources had been properly allocated, this fight would have absolutely been stopped," said Michaels. "They had failed to assess what was going on on their campus. They had the resources, they had the personnel, they had the school monitors, but they weren't utilized correctly, they weren't allocated correctly."

Michaels continued, "You had other problems, where the school police officer who's the one trained first responder on campus, the one person who has the ability to save a life, that's gone through those traumas, was off campus, and there was nobody on the campus who had the ability to do that."

Under Florida law, Rivera's mother can only collect about $700,000 of the settlement right now; the state legislature must approve the remainder of the settlement.

Michaels said, the lawsuit was not about money, but about making sure that no more lives are lost. "The one thing that your client wants you to do most, you can't do," said Michaels. "You can't turn back the hands of time, you can't prevent what happened, and our hope is that in doing that, we'll be able to stop the next terrible act like this before it happens."

The legislature will likely meet on the issue of the settlement during the spring session.

Rodriguez is scheduled to be sentenced in late November.

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