 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Doe Parents No. 1 v. State11/27/2002
In other words, the DOE owes its students the duty to take whatever precautions are reasonable to prevent harms that it anticipates, or reasonably should anticipate, may befall them. Because it is foreseeable that, should harm befall a student because the DOE breaches the foregoing duty, the student's parents will, at the very least, suffer emotional distress, the DOE's duty runs not only to its students, but to their parents as well.
Thus, we read Miller and Kim as addressing a specific aspect of the general standard of care to which the DOE must conform its superintendence of public schools. Miller and Kim stand for the proposition that the DOE fulfills its duty to students and parents by reasonably supervising students while they are attending school or participating in school activities. Our general characterization in Miller and Kim of the DOE's duty as one of providing "reasonable supervision" does not encyclopedically describe the application of the standard of care to which it must conform under all circumstances, but simply enumerates a particular aspect of the DOE's duty to students and parents in the particularized contexts presented in those cases.
Furthermore, as this court noted in both Miller and Kim, generalized supervision does not suffice where the DOE is "on notice," or reasonably should be aware, that there is a specific danger to the safety and welfare of students. In other words, the DOE is required to take affirmative steps specifically to ensure the safety and welfare of students if it reasonably anticipates, or reasonably should anticipate, a particular harm. In Miller, the record failed to establish that the DOE knew or reasonably should have anticipated that an unsupervised area of the school grounds was dangerous; thus, the DOE did not owe a duty specifically to supervise that area because it was not reasonably foreseeable that the plaintiff would be injured there. 56 Haw. at 341-42, 536 P.2d at 1200-201. Similarly, in Kim, because the DOE neither knew nor reasonably should have foreseen that a particular student would harm another, it did not owe a duty specifically to supervise either the assailant or the student harmed by him. 62 Haw. at 491-93, 616 P.2d at 1381-82. What is significant for present purposes, however, is that in neither Miller nor Kim could a duty reasonably to supervise arise under any circumstances if the DOE did not, in the first instance, owe a general duty to students to anticipate foreseeable harms and take whatever reasonable steps were necessary to prevent that harm.
Cases like Eisel and Brooks exemplify the proposition that, if a school knows, or reasonably should foresee, that a student intends to commit suicide, then a duty arises to take reasonable steps to prevent the child's suicide, including, at the very least, to warn the child's parents or guardian of his or her suicidal ideation. Both the Eisel and Brooks courts expressly recognized that the specific duty to warn parents of their child's suicidal ideation arises out of the school's general duty to anticipate reasonably foreseeable harm to students and to exert reasonable care to prevent that harm.
Accordingly, we hold that the duty of care that the DOE owes to students and their parents is, on a general level, a duty to take whatever precautions are necessary reasonably to ensure the safety and welfare of the children entrusted to its custody and control against harms that the DOE anticipates, or reasonably should anticipate. Although we have not expressly said so in the past, it is readily apparent that the foregoing duty arises from the "special relationship" that the DOE shares with its students and their parents, which the DOE policies received into evid
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 Hawaii Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|