New ground for California college students

When she went to her UCLA chemistry lab on Oct. 8, 2009, Katherine Rosen didn't know. She didn't know her classmate, quiet Damon Thompson, was hearing voices in his head saying she and other UCLA women were ridiculing him, calling him stupid. She didn't know Thompson had named her as one of the women doing so, had been writing letters to faculty for almost a year urging they stop the ridicule, and had a history of violence, having been permanently expelled from the dorm and ordered to therapy as a condition of his remaining in school.

And she didn't know her professor and teaching assistant knew about Thompson's threats against her. She didn't know student-counseling personnel, campus police, and housing staff knew about Thompson's history of violence. She didn't know they were searching for Thompson but wouldn't look in the most obvious place to find him -- the very chem lab she and he were attending.

What Katherine did know was that UCLA claimed she was part of one of the most secure campuses in the country. She knew just months before, campus officials had republished UCLA's commitment to "provide a safe work environment for all faculty, staff and students -- one that is free from violence or threats of harm." Sadly, Rosen didn't know the Regents of the university would disclaim responsibility when those charged with implementing this commitment failed to fulfill it -- a failure that resulted in Thompson's savage knife attack on her that day.

Rejecting the Regents' disclaimer, in a case of first impression, the California Supreme Court ruled on March 22 that "universities have a special relationship with their students and a duty to protect them from foreseeable violence during curricular activities." Regents of the University of California v. Superior Court (Los Angeles), 2018 DJDAR 2629. Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Carol Corrigan looked first to "whether a university has a special relationship with its students." Such a relationship "supports a duty to warn or protect them from foreseeable harm," unless "policy considerations clearly require an exception." (Justice Ming Chin concurred only in the result and wrote separately to express his view that the duty should be limited to the boundaries of the classroom.)

Students stand in a "special relationship" with their colleges.

The court found that the relationship between colleges and their students share common features with other relationships held to be "special." They have an aspect of "dependency" where one party "relies to some degree on the other for protection." Where one party is dependent, the other has "superior control over the means of protection." The court analogized cases involving bus patrons and incarcerated prisoners. "Special relationships have defined boundaries," "limited to specific individuals" so that "the defendant's duty is less burdensome and more justifiable."

Turning to the student-college relationship, the court traced its history. Justice Corrigan noted that before the 1960s colleges assumed the role of a parental stand-in with "some obligation to protect students." But by the '70s and '80s, the relationship became more the college as a "bystander." Social change "expanded the privacy and autonomy rights of adult students." California appellate courts responded with decisions that rejected relationship-based duties, particularly in cases involving alcohol or fraternities. The court noted its own decisions had recognized a duty in the context of a negligently maintained parking structure and an intercollegiate baseball game.

Today's college environment is unique and "far more to its students than a business." It is a community. Students are "dependent on their college communities to provide structure, guidance, and a safe learning environment." "Colleges, in turn, have superior control over the environment and the ability to protect students." "The college-student relationship thus fits within the paradigm of a special relationship."

Wary of creating a too-far-reaching duty, the court took pains to limit the special relationship "to activities that are tied to the school's curriculum." It does not extend "to student behavior over which the university has no significant degree of control." The classroom, where Rosen was attacked, presents the "quintessential setting" where the college exercises control.

Policy considerations support a duty.

The existence of the special relationship compels a duty finding unless "other policy considerations clearly require an exception." The court analyzed the policy considerations in play by looking to its traditional construct, the seven Rowland factors, formulated in its 1968 decision Rowland v. Christian, 69 Cal. 2d 108, 113 (1968). It first noted that the people of California had, through their constitution, established "fundamental public policy favoring measures to ensure the safety of California's public school students." Examining the factors, the court continued its traditional emphasis on foreseeability as "the most important." Tracing the developments in campus safety since the Virginia Tech tragedy in 2007, the court concluded, "Even a comparatively rare classroom attack is a foreseeable occurrence that colleges have been equipping themselves to address for at least the past decade."

The Regents' policy arguments failed to withstand scrutiny. Implementing the threat-assessment programs cannot be too expensive -- UCLA already employs them -- with money extracted from the students themselves as registration fees. Imposing a duty to exercise due care in executing existing threat assessment programs will not deter students from seeking mental health care anymore than those programs already do. According to a February 2011 Daily Bruin article, UCLA's threat-assessment program intervened in eight of 116 cases it considered in 2009-2010. "Considerations of public policy do not justify categorically barring an injured student's claims against the university."

"A duty of care is not the equivalent of liability." Rather, colleges have a "duty to act with reasonable care when aware of a foreseeable threat of violence in a curricular setting" the exercise of which "will vary under the circumstances of each case." Public college students such as Rosen will still have to navigate college claims of governmental immunity and all students will have to demonstrate that their college has breached the standard of care.

Notwithstanding the court's qualifications and limitations, the decision breaks new ground for California's 3.6 million college students. It extends to college students the special-relationship-based duty long owed to K through 12 students. The decision affirms the court's commitment to Rowland-factors paradigm for duty determination. Duty is the rule unless public-policy considerations require an exception.