A state appeals court has reversed a Buffalo-based trial judge’s denial of a directed verdict, after a jury awarded $130,502 to the parent of an area student who’d claimed their daughter was physically injured when a faculty member used a microphone to loudly tell students to “be quiet” during a test.

A unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, has handed down a directed verdict in favor of the lawsuit’s defendant-appellant, the Buffalo-area Cheektowaga-Sloan Union Free School District. The five-justice panel wrote that “[w]ithout knowing what is ‘too loud,’” quoting Powell v Metropolitan Entertainment Co., there was “no standard of care by which a jury could determine on the evidence presented [at trial] that defendant had breached a duty owed to plaintiff” when the faculty member yelled through a microphone to an auditorium full of students to be quiet.

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