In Doe v. Anderson Union High School Dist., published May 4, 2022, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for the defendant school district, principal, and superintendent. A teacher at a high school in the district had a sexual relationship with the plaintiff student, then 17. The relationship included sexual activity in his classroom. The school district had no facts, reports, or rumors that the teacher had engaged in any improper relationship. There were video security cameras aimed at the doors of the classroom. The video footage was saved for 14 days before automatic erasure. Per district policy, footage was reviewed only if the district learned of an incident that may have been caught on video. The district maintained an alarm system that covered the main building and the classroom. Each employee had a code to deactivate the alarm. The district had not requested data from the alarm company on when alarms were deactivated or by whom. The student sued the defendants for negligent hiring and negligent supervision. The defendants moved for summary judgment on the ground that there was no evidence they knew or should have known that the teacher posed a risk of harm to students. The plaintiff conceded lack of evidence of negligent hiring, and so focused on negligent supervision. In opposition to summary judgment, the plaintiff submitted an expert declaration from a retired principal and school administrator. He opined that the principal had a duty to monitor teachers to determine if they were spending too much time on campus late at night, including interviewing teachers and reviewing video footage. The trial court ruled that the risk to the plaintiff was not foreseeable.
The appellate court ruled that the district's administrators' duty of supervision to protect students was limited to the risks of harm that were reasonably foreseeable--those known to the administrators or that reasonably should have been known to them. School districts are not the insurers of their students' physical safety. Sexual misconduct by school personnel is not inherently foreseeable. The administrators did not know that the teacher would have se with the student, and had no information that would support a conclusion that they should have known. They therefore did not have a duty to review alarm data and video recordings to constantly monitor all teachers, students, and campus visitors. Nor did they have such a duty specifically as to the plaintiff and the teacher. To impose such a duty on this record would be unreasonable.