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Doe Parents No. 1 v. State11/27/2002
a proclivity for harm." Id. at 492, 616 P.2d at 1382. This court therefore held that, " s the peril was neither known nor reasonably foreseeable, there was no basis" for the imposition of a duty of "specific supervision" upon the DOE "to cope with the danger." Id.
Although neither Miller nor Kim expressly determined that there was a "special relationship" between the DOE and either its students or its students' parents, in Lee, as we have noted, we cited with approval to two other jurisdictions that haveheld that a school or school district stands in the shoes of a student's parents when the student is in the school's custody. The issue sub judice in Lee was whether the State and its employee, Manuel Corregedore, owed a duty to Anthony Perreira to prevent his suicide. 83 Hawai`i at 156, 925 P.2d at 326. At the State of Hawaii's Office of Veterans' Services, the State employed Corregedore as a Veterans' Services Counselor IV; at the time he committed suicide, Perreira, a disabled Vietnam veteran, "regularly" met with and "received help from" Corregedore. Id. In a wrongful death claim maintained by Perreira's estate, the plaintiffs asserted that Corregedore was subject to an affirmative duty, arising from his professional relationship with Perreira, to "prevent Perreira's suicide." Id. at 156, 158, 925 P.2d at 326, 328; accord id. at 177 n.3, 925 P.2d at 348 n.3 (Levinson, J., dissenting) (noting that the plaintiffs "assert only that Corregedore owed Perreira a duty to take reasonable action to prevent his suicide" (emphasis omitted)). On appeal, a majority of this court held that Corregedore did not owe Perreira such a duty. Id. at 172-73, 925 P.2d at 342-43 (declining to impose such a duty upon Corregedore as a matter of common law and holding that HRS ch. 363, relating to veterans' rights and benefits, did not impose a statutory duty of care upon Corregedore to prevent Perreira's suicide).
In a lengthy discussion of the policy considerations that, in the Lee majority's view, ultimately militated against imposing a duty upon Corregedore "to prevent Perriera's suicide," see Lee, 83 Hawai`i at 166-72, 925 P.2d at 336-42, the Lee majority distinguished Eisel and Brooks as follows:
We are aware of one instance in which a court held that "school counselors [at a middle school] have a duty to use reasonable means to attempt to prevent a [student's] suicide when they are on notice of a child or adolescent student's suicidal intent." Eisel [,] . . . 597 A.2d 456 [ ]. In addition, another court held that a high school teacher had a duty to exercise reasonable care in preventing a high school student's suicide. Brooks[,] . . . 903 P.2d 79 [ ]. However, both Eisel and Brooks are clearly distinguishable from the instant case. While the suicide victim in the instant case, Perreira, was an independent, forty-two year old adult man, "Eisel's claim involve suicide by an adolescent[,]" Eisel, 597 A.2d at 451, and Brooks involved "the suicide of fourteen-year-old Jeffrey Brooks." Brooks, 903 P.2d at 75. Thus, while Perreira had the freedom, as an adult, to enter or leave the Veterans Administration Clinic and the Office of Veterans' Services, accepting or refusing medical treatment as he pleased, the suicide victims in Eisel and Brooks were children under the care, protection, control[,] and supervision of their respective schools, a role which the Brooks court "described as one in loco parentis." Brooks, 902 P.2d at 79 (emphases in original). Likewise, the Eisel court recognized "the doctrine that the relation of a school vis a vis a pupil is analogous to one who stands in loco parentis, with the result that a school is under a special duty to exercise reasonable care to protect a pupil from harm.
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