$4.25 Million Settlement for Six Students Abused by University Place Wrestling Coach

David O'Connor coached wrestling at Curtis Junior High and Curtis High School in University Place, Washington, from roughly 2003 through 2007. During that time, he sexually abused at least six student-athletes, who were teenagers when the abuse occurred. What the school district had not done before placing him with students was a meaningful background check: a 1977 Pierce County conviction for two counts of indecent liberties against minors was publicly discoverable through a basic internet search, and a court order from that case prohibited O'Connor from contact with children under fifteen.

By the time lawsuits were filed, two decades had passed since the abuse. Attorneys for the former students, including Ashton Dennis of Washington Law Center alongside co-counsel from Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala, built the case around the district's hiring and supervision failures. The core argument was straightforward: a registered sex offender with a documented history of abusing children had been given unrestricted access to student-athletes, and no one in the district's administration had checked.

In August 2022, University Place School District agreed to pay $4.25 million to the six plaintiffs in that initial group of claims. At the time of that settlement, three additional civil cases from the same coaching era remained pending and were set to proceed toward trial.

Those remaining cases resolved in May 2023, when the district agreed to pay $9.5 million to three more former students, averting a four-week jury trial that had been scheduled before Pierce County Superior Court Judge Matthew H. Thomas. Across both settlements, nine survivors received a combined $13.75 million from the district. O'Connor's 1977 conviction, and the district's failure to surface it before he worked with children, was central to the liability theory in both rounds of litigation.