Ex-student who sued Pima College must pay $111K

A former student who sued Pima Community College for violating her rights as an English speaker is on the hook for more than $100,000 after losing the case.

Terri Bennett, who claimed she was wrongly suspended for complaining when fellow students spoke Spanish to one another in class, must pay $111,000 toward PCC’s legal costs and fees, a Pima County judge recently ruled.

That’s far less than the $311,000 PCC’s attorneys sought, but far more than what Bennett’s lawyers wanted, which was for her to pay nothing.

PCC won a decisive victory against Bennett, 52, with a unanimous jury verdict in the school’s favor in August.

College officials said the former nursing student was suspended for harassing Spanish-speakers.

Evidence at trial showed Bennett referred to Hispanic classmates as “spics, beaners and illegals” and referred to the Spanish language as “gibberish.”

After the verdict, PCC’s lawyers asked the court to make Bennett cover all the college’s legal costs. Doing so would discourage others from launching pointless lawsuits to make political statements, they argued.

In a ruling last week, Pima County Superior Court Judge Richard S. Fields said PCC “is justified” in requesting the full amount.

Even so, Fields ordered only partial reimbursement. He said he took several factors into consideration when deciding the final amount, such as the novelty of the legal issues the case raised.

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Bennett’s attorney, John Munger of Tucson, could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

Phoenix attorney Georgia Staton, who represented PCC, said the college was forced to defend itself because of the potential impact on students if Bennett had prevailed.

“You can’t go around as a college telling people they can’t speak their own language,” Staton said in a phone interview Thursday.

Bennett’s legal costs were covered by Pro-

English, a national lobby group that supports English speakers. Pro-

English is viewed by some as an anti-immigrant hate group, a characterization the group disputes.

The latest ruling leaves PCC out of pocket around $200,000 once Bennett pays her share.

Taxpayers will cover about $10,000 of that, with the rest to be covered by an insurance-like fund PCC pays into, college spokeswoman Libby Howell said.