The lawsuit, filed in May, accused the city of "failing to act in part because one of the callers is the son of Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy."
The exact amount the Board of Education paid the family of Candace Owens, now an 18-year-old Stamford High graduate, was made public yesterday after The Advocate filed a Freedom of Information request last week.
The Board of Education spent an additional $25,000 on legal expenses, including representation by a Hartford law firm, Shipman & Goodwin LLP, school board spokeswoman Sarah Arnold said.
The case was terminated two weeks ago at a settlement conference, according to court records. As part of the settlement, the Board of Education denied any wrongdoing and liability.
The school board has 30 days from the settlement date to pay the Owens family by check to their attorney, Norman Pattis. The entire $62,500 tab will come out of a $375,000 legal fund.
"The case was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties," said Patrick Fahey, one of the attorneys who represented the Board of Education.
He declined to comment further.
Neither Pattis nor Robert Owens, the father of Candace Owens, returned phone messages.
The Board of Education attempted to keep the terms of the settlement from being disclosed because of a confidentiality clause. But the Freedom of Information Commission said that any settlement funded by taxpayers is public record unless it is sealed by the court.
The settlement marked the end of a yearlong controversy that stoked racial tensions and political drama.
Last February, at least one of five teenagers sitting in a car left messages threatening to kill Owens, who is black, and repeatedly used a racial epithet. In one of three messages, one of them referred to her as "dirty" and threatened to burn her house down and tar and feather her.
The group included Malloy's youngest son, Sam, then 14. The mayor released a statement in March saying his son cooperated with police and did not know the alleged ringleader, Evan Kopek, or Owens before the night of the calls. He has declined comment since then.
Kopek, now 18, was a former friend and classmate of Owens. Two days before the phone incident, they had a shouting match during class. School officials suspended Kopek for that but would not discipline him and the other boys for an incident committed off school grounds unless the police made an arrest, which drew criticism from the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Owens left school for six weeks, saying it was traumatic to attend with the alleged callers. She returned after Kopek was arrested in late March. Another teen was arrested later that spring. School officials would not say whether they disciplined Kopek after the arrest.
The lawsuit said the decision to delay suspensions amounted to a failure to protect Owens. The suit accused the city of violating the federal Title IX rule banning discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. The school system has "continued to do nothing to protect Ms. Owens from repeated harassment and intimidation by the young men and their friends," the suit stated.
None of the students involved in the case attends Stamford High any more, Arnold said.
Candace Owens was arrested in an unrelated harassment case in October. In November, Kopek pleaded to being a youthful offender and had his case sealed. He will have no criminal record. He faced charges of first-degree harassment and second-degree intimidation by bigotry or bias.
It is not known whether Malloy's son was charged because he is a juvenile.
