A judge has denied a motion by a private Studio City school to be dismissed as a co-defendant with Byron Scott in a lawsuit accusing the former Lakers player and coach of sexually assaulting a girl in 1987 during a team event at her high school, when she was 15 and he was 26.
The complaint alleged sexual battery and false imprisonment. Scott, now 64, is named as a defendant along with Campbell Hall School, a private, prestigious K-12 independent Episcopal school. Campbell Hall attorneys filed court papers in October with Judge Lee Arian asking that the school be removed as a defendant on grounds the administration had “no duty to prevent Scott’s unforeseeable third-party criminal act.”
But on Friday, the judge denied the motion. He noted that Scott was permitted to engage in isolated conversations with plaintiff, including a one-on-one lunch with the plaintiff in the banquet room.
`That conduct may reasonably be viewed as Scott testing the level of supervision at the school before ultimately asking plaintiff to show him the gym, where the alleged sexual assault occurred,” the judge wrote.
The girl was the only student selected to remain after others left, yet no one checked on her whereabouts during lunch and no one looked for Scott and the plaintiff while they were alone, the judge said.
“The evidence reflects that plaintiff’s whereabouts were effectively ignored,” Arian wrote.
The plaintiff’s suit stated that she was attending summer school at Campbell Hall when she was sexually assaulted by Scott in a locked janitor’s closet in the school gymnasium. The Lakers were at the school to film an instructional basketball video in the gym and meet with students, parents and faculty members, according to the complaint.
But in their court papers, Scott’s attorneys stated that he believed the girl was a member of the production crew and not a student.
“Simply stated, Scott has testified that he and plaintiff engaged in a consensual sex act where Scott reasonably believed that plaintiff was over the age of 18,” Scott’s lawyers stated in their pleadings while adding that the plaintiff, 15 at the time, testified that she “hung out” with the production crew.
The encounter between the plaintiff and Scott was never told to anyone at the school and remained unreported until the 2022 lawsuit, Scott’s attorneys further stated, adding that in their dismissal pleadings the Campbell Hall lawyers wrongly stated that the former NBA player admitted to committing a sexual assault.
“That is completely false,” Scott’s attorneys stated in their court papers while contending that the intimacy was consensual.
According to the suit filed in December 2022 alleging sexual battery and other claims, the plaintiff loved school, had many friends and had never before kissed a boy.
“That summer, her innocence was shattered and her life forever altered,” the suit stated.
Trial of the lawsuit is scheduled Feb. 23.