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School district accused of negligence after repeated warnings about dangerous field conditions were ignored.
The Newport-Mesa Unified School District has agreed to a $31 million settlement with Manny Garcia, a former Corona del Mar High School football player who suffered a traumatic brain injury during a practice in 2021. Garcia, then a 15-year-old freshman, was injured on a poorly maintained field that coaches had warned district officials about for years.
The injury occurred on March 9, 2021, when Garcia leapt to catch a pass during a routine practice. He collided with other players and fell hard on the natural grass field, described by witnesses as dangerously compacted. Despite wearing a helmet, Garcia sustained severe brain bleeding that has left him with lifelong cognitive and emotional challenges.
“Manny went from being a top student to barely passing, and he will deal with these mental, physical, and emotional issues for the rest of his life,” said Jesse Creed, Garcia’s attorney.
Court records and depositions reveal that Newport-Mesa officials had been repeatedly warned for more than a decade about the hazardous condition of the Corona del Mar fields. These warnings, from both parents and coaches, were consistently ignored, leaving students like Garcia vulnerable to serious injuries.
In 2016, freshman football coach John Griffin explicitly alerted top district leaders, including then-superintendent Fred Navarro and deputy superintendent Paul Reed, about the field’s hardness and the risk of head injuries. Griffin’s warnings fell on deaf ears. In his email, Griffin pleaded for immediate repairs, citing his own sons’ injuries on the same field and an orthopedic surgeon’s opinion that the field’s poor condition directly contributed to those injuries. Griffin’s concerns were met with vague responses from district officials, who blamed California’s drought for field deterioration.
“We have an urgent safety issue at Corona del Mar that continues to be ignored. By allowing our field to deteriorate, we are exposing our students to head injuries. This is unacceptable,” Griffin wrote in 2016. The district’s response was to suggest that improvements might be possible after the summer.
However, no meaningful action was taken. Records show that, even after Griffin’s 2016 email and a subsequent meeting with concerned parents, the district failed to conduct basic safety testing for field hardness—a standard practice in professional and collegiate sports. The field where Garcia was injured remained dangerously compact, with numerous complaints about its poor condition continuing right up to the 2021 season.
Despite the warnings, district leadership, including Navarro and Reed, allowed the problem to fester for years. Reed retired in 2016, shortly after Griffin’s email, and Navarro followed in 2020, leaving behind unresolved safety issues.
Garcia’s family and their attorney argue that this negligence had devastating consequences for the young athlete. The settlement brings some closure, but Garcia faces a lifetime of challenges due to the injury he sustained.
“The district has taken responsibility for its failure to address the dangerous conditions of its field that harmed many children for more than a decade,” Creed said after the settlement.
The district attempted to defend its actions by pointing to field maintenance efforts and water restrictions during the drought. Annette Franco, Newport-Mesa’s public relations officer, insisted that the district conducts regular safety assessments and has made upgrades over the years. However, these claims do little to counter the documented evidence of negligence leading up to Garcia’s injury.
“Every school district should make sure the football fields are safe to play on so that this terrible thing never happens again,” Garcia said in a statement.
The settlement marks a grim reminder of what can happen when officials fail to act on clear warnings, prioritizing bureaucratic delays over student safety.
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