School injuries result from inadequate teacher supervision

Your heart skips a beat as you see your child's school's phone number pop up on your phone. Your mind goes through a million scenarios before you answer the call. "Everything's OK. But your son hurt his arm at recess. We think you should pick him up." You stop everything you're doing and rush to your child's aid.

Does this scenario sound familiar? Hundreds of thousands of children under the age of 16 are injured on school playgrounds every year in the United States. Los Angeles has the second-largest school district in the country. While some school injuries are not foreseeable, many of them are. Often, student injuries at school boil down to one simple cause: inadequate teacher or adult supervision.

Special Relationship

Schools have a 'special relationship' with their students. Parents entrust their children to school officials ("in loco parentis"), and schools must use reasonable measures to protect students from foreseeable injuries at the hands of third parties acting negligently or intentionally. C.A. v. William S. Hart Union High School Dist. (2012) 53 Cal.4th 861. This special relationship requires schools to supervise the conduct of children on school grounds during school sessions, school activities, recesses, and lunch periods. Bartell v. Palos Verdes Peninsula School Dist. (1978) 83 Cal.App.3d 492. This special relationship stems, in part, from the compulsory nature of education. Students are required to attend school; the law therefore, imposes special affirmative duties on school officials to protect them.

Duty to Supervise

The school district's duty to supervise students is well established. The Government Code imposes vicarious liability on a school district for an act or omission by a school district employee. Government Code §815.2. A plaintiff arguing that a student's injury stemmed from poor teacher supervision is really arguing that the school, through the teacher or adult employee, omitted its duty to supervise the student.

Teachers must regulate students' conduct so as to prevent disorderly and dangerous practices which are likely to result in physical injury to immature scholars, and the known tendency of students to engage in aggressive and impulsive behavior which exposes them and their peers to the risk of serious physical harm. Dailey v. Los Angeles Unified School Dist. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 748. This duty extends to high school students too. As the Dailey Court noted, "adolescent high school students are not adults and should not be expected to exhibit that degree of discretion, judgment, and concern for the safety of themselves or others which we associate with full maturity." Your teenager might disagree! But can't we all look back at some risky activity we did in high school and be thankful we didn't get seriously injured? Some of us may have even learned this lesson the hard way.

I.A. v. Los Angeles Unified School District

The Court of Appeal recently discussed the teacher's duty to supervise students in an unpublished opinion, I.A. v. Los Angeles Unified School Dist. The facts are sad and concerning. But the case provides a helpful discussion of the issue of inadequate teacher supervision in the classroom.

In I.A., a seventh grader named Christina brought a loaded gun to school and hid it in her backpack. During science class, Christina took the gun out and showed it off to other students. There was a noticeable commotion around Christina's desk, then the gun discharged. Two students were shot, and the teacher suffered a shrapnel wound to her forehead. Parents of the injured children sued the school district, arguing that the science teacher should have noticed the disruption at Christina's desk before the gun fired. The Court noted that the fact that the teacher herself suffered a shrapnel wound to her forehead supported the inference that she was facing Christina's desk and the loaded gun. It was therefore likely that Christina displayed the gun for enough time for the science teacher to notice it and take corrective action. The Court reversed the trial court order granting summary adjudication to the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Court analogized to three appellate cases with similar facts, which all held that the plaintiff's injuries were a result of poor teacher supervision. In Mastrangelo v. West Side Union High School District (2 Cal.2d 540), the California Supreme Court held that an explosion in chemistry class in which a student had been maimed could have been avoided had the chemistry teacher been properly supervising the experiment. In Charonnat v. San Francisco Unified School Dist. (56 Cal.App.2d 840), one student broke another student's leg after some unsupervised rough playing at recess got out of hand. In Lileanthal v. San Leandro Unified School Dist. (139 Cal.App.2d 453), one student suffered serious injuries after another student threw a knife during an outdoor lesson. The teacher had been looking at his notes, and not the knife-flipping game that was occurring right in front of him.

Conclusion

School injury cases resulting from inadequate teacher supervision are highly fact-specific. Schools have a special relationship with all of their students, including those in high school. As the cases demonstrate, courts require detailed facts to support a plaintiff's argument that the student's injury was proximately caused by either total, or ineffective adult supervision. No parent ever wants to receive a phone call from school administration that their child was hurt on school premises. But if it happens - whether at recess, in the classroom, on school property during school hours, or even off the premises but during school hours - the cases cited here can be a starting point for arguing that the student's injuries were caused by insufficient teacher supervision.