OLYMPIA, Wash. (Legal Newsline) – A Washington State school district is not off the hook for the death of a student who was hit by a car while on an off-campus walk with his physical education class.
The state Supreme Court ruled on March 4 that there are still questions remaining about Ferdale School District’s liability, overturning a trial court ruling that said Ferndale did not owe student Gabriel Anderson a duty to keep him safe.
Anderson, who was a 15-year-old at Windward High, was killed after his PE class took a walk on West Smith Road in June 2015.
A driver, William Klein, had fallen asleep and left the roadway, striking Anderson and three other students in a 40-mph zone. Anderson and one of them died on immediately and the two others were severely injured.
“In this case, the legal cause analysis includes the underlying policy considerations for imposing liability,” Justice James Johnson wrote. “Given the special relationship existing between schools and students, school districts have a duty to protect their students from reasonably anticipated dangers.”
A fact-finder could determine a traffic accident could be reasonably foreseeable when 25 high school students go for a walk alongside West Smith Road, the decision found. Ferndale had argued that opening it to responsibility in this case would threaten school districts in the state with nearly unlimited liability.
“Ferndale posits that commonplace school practices that subject students to any risk would cease because of potential liability concerns, activities such as field trips, transportation by school bus, woodshop classes, and chemistry experiments,” Johnson wrote.
“But Ferndale fails to recognize that school districts would not be subject to civil liability if the school satisfied its duty of care by, for example, facilitating those activities with proper supervision, safety precautions, and instruction.
“Those activities are distinct from the one before us because a dispute exists over Ferndale’s duty of care. Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Meyers, this case involved an off campus class walk that did not comply with internal policies and safety precautions.”
The alleged acts of negligence are not so remote that they can’t be the legal cause of Anderson’s death, the majority ruled.
Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud concurred in an opinion, writing that the alleged failure to obtain required parental permission for the walk suffices to show legal cause but the decision to take a walk on a sidewalk in broad daylight off-campus does.