A man who claimed a teacher sexually abused him when he was attending high school in the 1980s has agreed to a $3 million settlement of his Middlesex County lawsuit.
Wayne Azzarello reached the settlement with the Edison School District on Oct. 28, the day the trial was set to start.
Azzarello's suit said during the time he was 13 to 15, Edison High School shop teacher Frederick Burkley sexually abused him multiple times in a small room off the woodshop. Azzarello filed the suit under a 2019 law that relaxed the statute of limitations for civil suits by adults who experienced sexual abuse as children.
The settlement was reached Oct. 28, just as jury selection was scheduled to start before Judge Christopher Rafano of Middlesex County Superior Court.
Azzarello's suit was one of nine pending against the Edison district in connection with abuse by Burkley. It was the first of that group to be resolved, said Jay Silvio Mascolo of Rebenack, Aronow & Mascolo in New Brunswick, who teamed with attorney Vincent Nappo of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala in Seattle to represent Azzarello.
Mascolo, who represents eight of the nine plaintiffs suing the Edison district over abuse by Burkley, said the cases were consolidated for mediation before former Judge Michael F. O'Neill, a mediator in Branchburg.
For each year that the abuse took place from 1979 to 1985, the school district had about $30 million in available insurance coverage.
The defense attorneys at the table during mediation include David J. Dering of Leary, Bride, Mergner & Bongiovanni in Cedar Knolls, the counsel of record for the school district, as well as an attorney for the school district, then two other attorneys representing insurance companies, and a third attorney hired by the school district to deal with insurance issues, said Mascolo. The mediator's work has focused on availability of insurance in each case, he said.
"What he was really doing over multiple sessions of mediations, was actually mediating the insurance coverages issue," Mascolo said.
The suit said Azzarello "sustained physical and psychological injuries, including but not limited to, severe emotional and psychological distress, humiliation, fright, dissociation, anger, depression, anxiety, family turmoil, a severe shock to his nervous system, physical pain and mental anguish, and emotional and psychological damage." Some of his injuries are of a permanent and lasting nature, the suit said.
Azzarello claimed the school district was negligent for not providing proper supervision of Burkley and failing to implement polices and procedures that would have prevented the abuse in the school. The school district maintained that it had no notice that Burkley was dangerous and that it had no notice that any abuse was occurring, Mascolo said. Burkley's abuse came to light when a teacher overheard two students discussing it, Mascolo said. Burkley pleaded guilty in 1986 to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual contact. He is now dead.
Dering, the lawyer for the school district, did not respond to a call about the case.
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