NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The decks are clearing for a seven-day jury trial to begin early next year in the $40 million lawsuit brought by the teacher who got shot by a 6-year-old student at Richneck Elementary School in early 2023.

The trial is now slated to go forward after the Virginia Court of Appeals on Friday declined to allow the Newport News School Board to appeal a judge’s ruling allowing Richneck teacher Abby Zwerner to take her case to trial.

The school board — which contends Zwerner’s sole remedy for her shooting injury is by way of the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Act— will have to wait until after the seven-day trial is over to take up that issue.

Zwerner’s attorneys hailed the ruling as a victory.

“The higher court has spoken — we will go to trial,” Zwerner’s team of attorneys, Diane Toscano, Kevin Biniazan, and Jeffrey Breit, said in a statement. “This is another important victory in a string of victories for Abby Zwerner that paves the way for her finally having her day in court.”

But Annie Lahren, an attorney with Pender & Coward representing the school board, downplayed the ruling. She called “an interlocutory appeal” — or an appeal of an issue before a case is ultimately decided in a trial court — “an extraordinary remedy that is rarely ever granted.”

“We knew when we filed the petition that the Court of Appeals granting our petition at this stage in the litigation was a long shot,” she wrote in a statement. “The case will now proceed to trial, and we firmly believe that the Supreme Court of Virginia will ultimately rule that Ms. Zwerner’s workplace injuries fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of Virginia’s Worker’s Compensation Act.”

All issues in the appeal, she said, “are preserved for future appellate review” after the trial.

The trial is now slated to begin on Jan. 21, 2025, which would be about two years after the shooting.

On Jan. 6, 2023, one of Zwerner’s first grade students pulled a gun from his front hoodie pocket during a reading class. He pointed the firearm at Zwerner, who sat at her reading table about 10 feet away, and fired a single round.

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