CHILD’S DISAPPEARANCE CREATES A CATCH-22
by: Thomas B. Scheffey
Connecticut Law Tribune-September 16, 2002

      Five months after her 10-year old daughter Bianca LeBron disappeared from Elias Howe School in Bridgeport last November, Carmelita Torres went to Probate Judge Paul Joseph Ganim to be appointed administratrix of her child’s estate.
      The mother was caught in a legal time warp.
      Under one timeline, she was six and half years to early. State law requires a seven-year period before a missing person can be legally presumed dead. But under the law that requires claimants to notify a municipality of intent to sue within six months of the claim arising, she was just about to run out of time.
      Ganim added up the stark facts as of April 12. Investigations by the FBI and police have found nothing about her whereabouts, location or well-being. She was not with her father, Wilroberto LeBron, a Bridgeport resident who was divorced from Torres years earlier.

No Physical Evidence
      “The Court has determined,” wrote Ganim, “that the forgoing evidence supports the conclusion that death has occurred.”
      This cleared the way for Torres to sue for wrongful death and the cost of burial and funeral expenses without a body, or any evidence that the girl is, indeed, actually dead. One of the greatest assets in the child’s estate is her claim against her elementary school teachers and the school board, which the mother is seeking through a Bridgeport Superior Court wrongful death case with a Sept. 2002 return date.
      “It’s hard for the mother to do, very hard.” said L. Douglas Shrader, of Shelton’s Shrader and Knapp, who is representing Torres in this mysterious case.
      Bridgeport attorney Arthur C. Laske who is defending the suit on behalf of the city, said he’s never had or heard of a case like this. “It presents a whole host of legal questions,” said Laske, noting that the case is pled in the alternative, seeking compensation for the missing girls suffering and “permanent injuries” at the hands an unidentified abductor or abductors. It also makes multiple claims for negligence and wrongful death against teacher Robert Memoli, assistant principle Clifford Dudley and Bridgeport School Superintendent Sonia Diaz Salcedo.

Mystery Van
      “While she was in line, preparing to enter school, on the playground at the rear of the school building with her classmates, Bianca told defendant Memoli that she was going to leave the line to meet her ‘uncle’,” the complaint alleges. The girl entered a van driven by an unknown young male driver. He drove away, and Bianca’s whereabouts have not been know since, it states.
      “ I was concerned that the notice had to be given in a proper capacity. Thus, if the child were dead, the child’s estate had to give notice and that could only be done by an administrator,” Shrader explained.
      His firm is working with Norwalk’s Goldman, Gruder and Woods, which filed the notice of intention to sue Bridgeport with an April 23 letter signed by attorney Angelo Maragos. In his research for the probate application, Maragos said he had found precedent for appointing an administrator in order to prevent a tort case from becoming barred by the statute of limitations. “This case is different,” Maragos said in an interview. “To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a case that straddles the fence as this one does,” because lawyers usually know whether their clients are dead or alive. Maragos said LeBron as is represented by her mother as “next friend”---the adult representative of a living minor.
      If, as everyone hopes, Bianca LeBron turns out to be alive, her claims against the school and city will still be preserved, Maragos noted.
      The complaint asserts that her teacher broke with school policy by allowing her to leave with someone who had not signed in with school authorities and presented identification. The situation was exacerbated, the suit claims because the teacher simply marked her “tardy” and did not notify others of her departure.
      The suit charges the school board with having inadequate security and guards at the elementary school and faults the level of supervision.