A civil case against the Montecito Union School District is expected to go to trial soon, with jury selection scheduled to start Monday.
Two former students, identified in court documents as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2, are suing the district for failing to protect them in the 1970s from alleged sexual abuse and harassment by then-Principal Stanford Kerr.
Jury selection was originally scheduled for last week but was pushed back to allow the attorneys for MUSD, Craig Price and Eric Bengston, to interview a new witness, Steven Dunn, who was recently discovered by the attorneys representing the former students.
On Wednesday, Price argued in court to push the trial to early 2026 as they were only made aware of the new witness last week.
John Richards, one of the attorneys representing the former students, argued that it would be unfair to the plaintiffs to push the trial back and that Dunn didn’t provide new information but merely corroborated the victims’ story.
Judge Thomas Anderle said the case would be ready for trial, if it wasn’t for Dunn being brought in as a new witness at the “eleventh hour.”
To not delay the trial, Richards and co-counsel Tim Hale agreed to pull Dunn from their witness list.
The official start of the trial will depend on how long the jury selection process takes.
The plaintiffs, now in their 50s, allege that at least two of Kerr’s secretaries and a teacher, identified as H.R. in court documents, knew about the abuse and harassment and successfully conspired to cover it up.
Kerr died in 2013 and was the superintendent/principal of Montecito Union School for 25 years until 1979. The case is the first time any sexual abuse allegations against Kerr have been made public.
The lawsuit comes after a 2019 state law, Assembly Bill 218, gave people until age 40 to file claims against educators who allegedly abused or assaulted them and the administrations who failed to protect them. The legislation also opened a three-year window for people to file lawsuits for even older allegations.
The Carpinteria Union School District is facing a similar situation with former students suing the district over abuse from Virgil Williams, a former principal of Main Elementary during the 1970s.
In June, current MUSD Superintendent/Principal Anthony Ranii said the district did not know about the alleged abuse until the lawsuit was filed.
Normally, districts are protected by liability insurance, but because the allegations are from the 1970s, the district hasn’t been able to find its insurance policy from that time, and the insurance company no longer exists.
That means that if a jury sides with the former students, the district would have to pay any damages out of pocket.