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District’s Web-cam legal bill tops $550,000 so far

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Could the school district caught spying on students via web-cams do anything else to provoke the ire of local residents? The answer is: “quite possibly.”

The Lower Merion School District is facing legal bills of more than $550,000 — a number that could rise. If it loses a lawsuit against its current insurer concerning the tab, the district will have to use its own (that is, taxpayer’s) funds.

As reported last week, Graphic Arts Mutual Insurance Company says it won’t pay the district’s legal fees, insisting its personal injury policy doesn’t cover the costs. The insurer is currently covering 80 percent of the district’s legal bills.

After the lawsuit, filed by the family of student Blake Robbins, the school district acknowledged that investigators recovered a  “substantial number of webcam photos.” And in the ensuing weeks the district has hired a slew of experts to help bolster their defense. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

The school board in early March agreed to pay the Ballard Spahr law firm $250 an hour – a discounted rate for a prominent Center City law firm – to defend and investigate the lawsuit filed Feb. 16 by Blake Robbins and his parents. Robbins, a Harriton High School sophomore, argued in the suit that the tracking system violated wiretapping and privacy laws.

Ballard Spahr, in turn, contracted L3, a computer forensics company, to help gather the evidence and prepare a report detailing when, why, and how often Lower Merion employees activated the tracking software on laptops issued to nearly 2,300 high school students since 2008.

Through March 28, Ballard Spahr had charged Lower Merion $311,000, according to the district’s figures. The bills for L3 came to $240,000 through April 12.

While the Lower Merion School District isn’t currently exactly struggling financially — it’s one Pennsylvania’s of the richest districts with a budget of $193 million — the timing couldn’t be worse for image-management. The district is also proposing a 4 percent tax hike.

Full story: District’s Web-cam legal bill tops $550,000 so far | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/28/2010