WENATCHEE — The Wenatchee School District need not turn over documents sought in a lawsuit by the family of drowned student Antonio Reyes, a Chelan County court officer ruled Friday.

In a written decision, Court Commissioner Bart Vandegrift immunized the district from answering 15 questions or turning over 23 batches of documents requested in the civil suit, which seeks an undetermined sum in damages for the 14-year-old's Nov. 17 death in the Wenatchee High School swimming pool.

The school district admitted liability in the suit and now seeks only to argue the damages it must award. It turned down a $15 million civil claim from the Reyes family last year, hoping for a better result at trial.

At issue was whether the district's admission of liability shielded it from further discovery sought by the Reyes family's attorney, Simeon Osborn. After hearing arguments Oct. 5, Vandegrift agreed late Friday afternoon that the requests by the Reyeses "seek neither admissible evidence nor information reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence."

Osborn's motion for discovery asked for documents including written safety policies, swim testing manuals, and photos and videos relevant to Reyes's death in a teacher-supervised P.E. class. His motion also asked the district to respond to several questions about the incident, many of them related to safety training, personnel and practices.

The district sought a protective order in August to avoid answering the requests, calling them unduly burdensome and outside the scope of the expected trial. Vandegrift agreed, citing case law that has judged evidence like that sought by Osborn "irrelevant and inadmissible where liability has been admitted."

Reyes is believed to have drowned during a treading-water exercise in the pool’s deep end, in a class supervised by a single teacher. He had not undergone a swimming test administered to all students in the class the week before. His body was found at the bottom of the pool 40 minutes after his P.E. class ended.

Osborn said in the Oct. 5 hearing he wants to learn whether there was “a deliberate, indifferent eye turned to safety regulations” at the school — findings he argued would be admissible at trial. Vandegrift said Osborn's motion offered "insufficient evidence to suggest that such an outcome is likely."

The commissioner also turned aside Osborn's argument that learning key details would establish the mental anguish suffered by his parents, Juan José and Filomena Reyes of Wenatchee, and contribute to the calculation of damages.

"... Why the decedent died, or what could be called the nature and extent of the defendant’s negligent acts or omissions, has sometimes been held inadmissible on the issue of damages for the survivor’s grief and suffering," Vandegrift wrote.

Jefferson Robbins: 664-7123

robbins@wenatcheeworld.com