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Two years after an 89-year-old violin teacher was sentenced to 30 years in prison for multiple counts of child molestation, the insurer for the Gainesville music school he operated is asking a court to absolve it from liability for a civil suit filed by one of the victims. 

Leon Messerlian was 85 when Hall County authorities arrested him in 2015 on charges including child molestation, sexual battery and enticing a child for indecent purposes. The charges came after a 12-year-old student at his Oxford Academy of Classical Studies accused him of improperly touching him. Subsequent allegations from other students soon followed, and he pleaded guilty to multiple counts in 2017.  

Messerlian is currently incarcerated at Calhoun State Prison. 

In 2018, a plaintiff identified as “A.P.,” and her son “M.P.,” who first raised concerns about Messarlian, sued him in Hall County State Court, saying the teacher fondled the child, forced him to touch Masserlian's genitals and showed him pornographic images from 2011 to 2015.

The complaint was later amended to add Masserlian's wife, Norma Masserlian, as a defendant, claiming she knew about her husband's abuse and helped conceal it, destroyed evidence and refused to testify against him.

The suit levels claims for assault and battery, conspiracy, fraud and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress. It seeks damages for M.P.'s medical expenses and treatment. 

The Hartford Insurance Co. filed a declaratory judgment action against the Messerians in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on July 10 asking to court to declare it has no duty to provide the $100,000 in coverage it carries for the Messerlians' home in Clermont. 

For one thing, the complaint said, no notice was given to the insurer until more than 3.5 years after A.P. “first became aware of the events giving rise to the underlying lawsuit and Leon H. Messerlian's arrest and more than a year after M.P. and A.P. filed the underlying lawsuit” against Messerlian.

It also said the coverage was barred by exclusions in the policy for intentional acts, incidents that occurred in businesses not located on the property and a specific exclusion for bodily injury or property damage “arising out of sexual molestation, corporal punishment or physical or mental abuse.”

The complaint was filed by Seth Friedman and Christopher Meeks of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, who did not respond to request for comment Wednesday. 

The Daily Report was unable to reach Norma Messerlian or the lawyer who represented her husband in the criminal action.

Matthew Cook of Gainesville's Cook Law Group, who represents A.P. and M.P., said the insurer's suit was news to him, and the first response he's had to the suit from anyone except the Messerlians.  

“The perpetrator and his wife have answered our complaint,” he said, and are apparently representing themselves. 

“We took his deposition and the wife's deposition, but the insurance company hasn't even provided a lawyer,”  said Cook. “This is a very serious case; this man spent a lot of money on his criminal defense.”