Are surety bond claims against gov’t officials the best way to stop COVID mandates?

Read to find out how:

• Big Pharma were on their way to bankruptcy or getting out of the vaccine business until Congress voted them a pass for vaccine injuries;
• Mega corporations often choose profits over public safety - in the case of vaccine manufacturers, there's nothing that can be done about it as long as they have their special protection;
• Ford showed how little regard large companies have for the lives of their customers, refusing engineer plans to spend $11 per vehicle to remedy a design flaw allowing gas tank explosions at low speed collisions;
• Grassroots activists who can't sue Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are instead going after school boards and others who mandate shots (and masks);
• These mothers and others are using a new website to help them make “bond claims” against those government officials;
• It has yet to be seen if the method will be effective, as some officials and insurance agencies are hunkering down to defend against the claims, but one mother already saw amazing results for her autistic son.

Parents resisting mandates that put their children’s physical and mental health at risk by forcing them to take vaccines with a high rate of side effects, to wear masks that may harm their language and emotional development while allowing bacteria to build up in their nasal cavity, or to follow exacting social distancing rules, are pursuing a circuitous route to legal relief.  They are pressing surety bond claims against officials approving these mandates.

Why sue a local school board member and not, say, Pfizer?

Manufacturer’s liability  

Manufacturer’s liability for faulty products is a built in protection against harm from those products, the main protection in fact. So much so that, when a large manufacturer is involved, even full compensation for injuries is not deemed sufficient, as a mega corporation may decide to simply absorb the costs of harming some of its customers in light of the greater profits. In these cases, large punitive fines are often added onto the compensation awarded the victims of the faulty products to take away any incentive to allow harm to the public.

When $11 per car is too much

In the classic example of the need for manufacturers to compensate and even be penalized for risking the public’s health, the University of North Carolina Greensboro reports in, “Case: The Ford Pinto,” that Ford’s engineers actually produced a table showing how their legal payouts for expected burn injuries and deaths, following a redesign of their Pinto in 1971, would cost less than spending the necessary $11 per vehicle to properly protect their gas tanks from exploding after the expected number of annual rear end impacts:

Benefits

Savings:

180 burn deaths, 180 serious burn injuries, 2,100 burned vehiclesUnit cost:$200,000 per death, $67,000 per injury, $700 per vehicleTotal benefit:(180 X $200,000) + (180 X $67,000) + (2,100 X $700) = $49.5 million

Costs

Sales:

11 million cars, 1.5 million light trucksUnit cost:$11 per car, $11 per truckTotal cost:12.5 million X $11 = $137.5 million

Ford executives chose to let the burns and deaths happen and pay them out. When a California appellate court refused Ford’s request to overturn millions in punitive damages from one burn case, the corporation had to pay millions more in settlements for “between 500 and 900 burn deaths because of Pinto car accidents,” and eventually “recalled all 1.5 million of its 1971–76 Pintos.”

In 1999, a court ordered General Motors to pay $4.8 billion in punitive damages for a “defectively designed fuel system that caused a Chevy Malibu to burst into flames after it was rear-ended.”

Vaccine manufacturers are different, very different

The vaccine industry, like other businesses, was also forced to pay for injuries caused by their products. Of course, that is, when the victims or their families were aware of the cause. Since vaccine injuries are rarely discussed in the media or by doctors, who are apt to tell patients, 

“there is no way” or ‘" guarantee" the issues are not related to the vaccine. Imagine the numbers if the medical community took this seriously, claims for vaccine injuries are rarely made.

Nonetheless, the CDC reports that sufficient monetary damages were awarded against vaccine makers in the 1970s, particularly for injuries caused by the diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus (DPT) vaccine, that, 

liability and prices soared, and several vaccine manufacturers halted production. A vaccine shortage resulted and public health officials became concerned … Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) in 1986.

In so doing, not only were the pharmaceutical giants relieved of paying punitive damages but compensatory ones as well. Thus was created a true immunity, the immunity of the vaccine makers from being held directly accountable for product injuries or from being forced to weigh the profit of its products against the liabilities they create. 

Bond claims

With pharmaceutical companies empowered to have injury and death lawsuits immediately dismissed under the law and with makers of face masks obviously not responsible for damages resulting from requirements to wear them throughout a school or school day, “Activist groups resort[ed] to School Surety Bonds claims to pressure officials into ending COVID mandates:   

In an attempt to counter mask mandates at local school districts, some organizations across the nation have begun to employ a little-known approach – targeting the surety bonds of their public school officials. Two activist groups in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Bethalto, Ill., have resorted to this tactic.

Public officials – including superintendents, treasurers, and others – are required to both take an oath of office and have a surety bond. These bonds are written agreements that keep officials accountable for their oath and hold them personally and financially liable for their actions. 

Some groups have attempted to leverage power through these bonds to shut down district-wide mask mandates, which some believe are a violation of state and federal statutes.

The pro-mandates Daily Kos reports, disparagingly, “Deplorables around the country are filing bond and insurance claims against school boards”:

In some states, school boards and superintendents are required to purchase surety bonds in order to guarantee that they carry out their legal duties. In other states, school boards are covered by their district’s liability insurance. North Carolina-based activist Miki Klann saw this as a way to bludgeon school boards into dropping mask mandates and other measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19. She recently launched a site called “Bonds for the Win” that helps anti-mask parents turn up the heat on school officials by hitting them in the wallet. Unfortunately, a number of parents across the country—including here in North Carolina—have taken up the cry, and it’s very likely more will follow.

Early success

In How One SINGLE Mom SAVED her ENTIRE School District!, Klann’s site claims an early win, with a video of a mother named Violet who begged her 16-year-old autistic son’s school to let her son have a mask exemption.

They refused. When forced to wear the masks he became distraught and he harmed himself so badly that he had to be hospitalized in a mental institution.

Violet obtained the bond for the superintendent of her school district. Turns out – The superintendent was carrying a $4 million liability per bond claim!!

So next Violet served the superintendent with a letter of intent to file a claim against her bond if she didn’t pull back the mask mandates, admit she was wrong, and resign within five days. The superintendent did nothing.

After day 6 Violet filed the claim against her at the bond company.

The very next day we have a recording from the lawyers who represent the district explaining that they have to get rid of the masks, all state and federal funding is BLOCKED, and the superintendent is on her own with regard to the $4 million claim!!!

Streamlined process

Bonds for the Win has created a well researched website that walks a person through the three steps of making a bond claim against a public official for unlawful actions:

1. Writing a letter to the government agency asking for a copy of their bond,
2. Writing the government official a notice that one intends to make a claim for their unlawful activity,
3. Filling out a claim form against the public official.

These three steps are laid out here in more detail:

1. Bond Request Letters - the site provides sample letters, individualized for each state, to make an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for a copy of the Public Official Surety Bond for a local school board, sheriff, state governor and secretary of state (i.e. whoever is issuing or enforcing a COVID mandate).
2. Notice of Intent to File Claim Against Public Offical’s Risk Management Plan - once the copy of the surety bond is obtained, one can use this webpage to download a template to fill in a dollar amount for the claim made, a list of relevant laws violated by the public official and a sample list of actions for the official to take to avoid having the insurance company behind the bond sued for that amount. Here’s part of the language the site recommends:

A BOND CLAIM MAY BE FILED AGAINST YOUR SURETY LIABILITY INSURANCE POLICY

IF THESE MANDATES DO NOT STOP TODAY

Total Amount Owed To Notifying Party: [Amount]

This notice is provided to inform you that the Notifying Party has provided the above descriptions of the unconstitutional and illegal actions that have endangered the health of my children attending this school district. Furthermore, the CRT and LGBTQ+ is inappropriate material to be taught in any school. It incites violence and causes extremely suicide tendencies in your children.  If these illegal mandates do not stop today, I will seek damages for the full amount listed above.

If this action does not stop today, the Notifying Party will file a claim against your [Insurance or Bond Company – Policy Number] . You have (72) hours upon receipt of this notice, to correct these violations at all the schools in the Scottsdale County School District. This includes the following:

• Stop coercing all forms of Covid-19 propaganda concerning how dangerous this is to our parents and our grandparents. That all children should want to save their lives by getting the vaccine and they can choose for themselves and do not need the consent of their parents to do this.
• End all vaccine clinics on school grounds …
• Halt all enforcement of policies that require universal masking/masking without parental consent. This includes forcing vaccines on teachers and masking the teachers of the district …

3. File a claim against a government official who does not agree to comply with the demands in the Letter of Intent - again, the website provides individualized forms and instructions particular to each state.

Uphill Fight?

The News & Observer denigrated the bond claim process in, “A new strategy is being used to try to end school mask mandates. It has QAnon ties.” After ad hominem attacks against the activists behind the movement, the article points to substantive hurdles they face, the above described success story notwithstanding:

Kelly Shaw, a political science professor at Iowa State University, called this a “largely unproven” approach to try to change public policy ...

After the [Wake County] school board didn’t meet the group’s demands, at least seven people filed claims with Liberty Mutual, Wake’s insurance carrier. Each claim seeks $1 million against the district’s liability insurance policy. 

Liberty Mutual told the claimants that they had improperly submitted a bond demand notice against the district’s commercial general liability package, according to Jonathan Blumberg, the school board’s attorney. 

Wake also sent a letter to the claimants denying that it violated any laws with its mask requirement or that it’s distributing obscenity to students. The district told the claimants it “stands ready to vigorously defend” against their allegations … the Board has acted in good faith and in accordance with state and local guidelines in making difficult policy decisions to protect the health and safety of students and employees,” according to the letter written by Tim Simmons, Wake’s chief communications officer.”