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Ochoa v. California State University6/15/1999
ate their own lives, colleges and universities may no longer be charged with a general duty of care to supervise student activities. (Id. at p. 209; see also Baldwin v. Zoradi (1981) 123 Cal.App.3d 275, 287-291.)
Plaintiff contends that Crow does not control this case because CSUS expressly took responsibility for supervising the events at issue, thus creating the special relationship and duty to the participants which we found not to exist in Crow. However, he cites no authority holding that a college or university forms a special relationship with its adult students, giving rise to a duty to protect them from the criminal acts of third parties, merely by organizing and sponsoring an intramural activity, and we are aware of no such authority.
Plaintiff quotes provisions in the CSUS-issued referees' handbook which authorize referees to eject disorderly participants and spectators, to penalize their teams, and to call in the campus police to control physically abusive or threatening participants and spectators. But if CSUS's bestowal of such "police powers" on referees created a special relationship between CSUS and its adult students who participate in intramural events, then every local government would create a special relationship with its citizens merely by establishing a police force. The law is otherwise. (See, e.g., Davidson v. City of Westminster (1982) 32 Cal.3d 197.)
Finally, we agree with CSUS that general tort law and public policy militate against creating the duty plaintiff argues for. Applying the well-known Rowland v. Christian factors, as plaintiff urges us to do, we find only two that count in his favor. First, it was certain that the plaintiff suffered injury. Second, the harm plaintiff suffered, a punch thrown by a participant in the course of a hotly contested soccer game, was reasonably foreseeable. However, the connection between the defendant's alleged conduct (negligent refereeing) and the plaintiff's harm was not particularly close. The failure to call every foul in a soccer game, even if negligent, is not particularly blameworthy.
It is unclear how the policy of preventing future harm would be fostered by finding a special relationship between universities and the participants in their intramural events, since it is unclear how those events could proceed if every injury suffered by a participant might expose the university to liability. The extent of the burden on the defendant created by a requirement that it protect every intramural participant from harm at the hands of every other would be extraordinary, as would be the likely increase in the defendant's insurance premiums (if it could still obtain insurance for intramural events). Finally, the likely consequences to the community would be the abandonment of intramural sports by colleges and universities, which would serve no one's interest.
Plaintiff has shown no basis on these facts for an exception to the Crow rule that institutions of higher education have no duty to their adult students to protect them against the criminal acts of third persons. Thus, we conclude that the trial court correctly granted summary judgment on this ground.
III.
We also agree with CSUS that section 831.7 immunizes it from liability on these facts.
As noted, the statute immunizes a public entity from liability for injury to any person "who participates in a hazardous recreational activity . . . ." Hazardous recreational activities include "body contact sports (i.e., sports in which it is reasonably foreseeable that there will be rough bodily contact with one or more participants) . . . ." (ยง 831.7, subd. (b)(3).) Where the facts are undisputed, the de
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