 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Leake v. Murphy7/7/2005
ANDREWS, P. J., PHIPPS and MIKELL, JJ.
This is an appeal from the grant of a motion to dismiss a negligence action brought by Alan and Sandy Leake, individually and as parents of Anna Elisabeth Leake ("Anna"), a child who was grievously injured in February 2002 when a deranged individual attacked her with a hammer at Mountain Park Elementary School in Gwinnett County. The Leakes contend that the defendants, including the individual members of the Gwinnett County Board of Education ("Board") and the Superintendent of the Gwinnett County School District, J. Alvin Wilbanks, failed to develop a safety plan for the school which addressed security issues, as required by OCGA § 20-2-1185. That Code section provides in pertinent part that " very public school shall prepare a school safety plan to help curb the growing incidence of violence in schools to respond effectively to such incidents. . . . School safety plans . . . shall address security issues." In an additional count, the complaint alleges that the defendants, including the school's principal, Debbie Allred, and her front office staff members, Connie Finn and Melissa Switzer, are liable for Anna's injuries based on their negligent failure to implement and enforce measures designed to control access to the school as well as to monitor people entering the school under a sign-in policy developed a year earlier. The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on the basis of official immunity, and the trial court granted the motion. For the reasons that follow, we reverse as to the individual Board members and the Superintendent on the claim alleging failure to prepare a security plan pursuant to OCGA § 20-2-1185. The remainder of the judgment is affirmed.
A motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted should not be sustained unless (1) the allegations of the complaint disclose with certainty that the claimant would not be entitled to relief under any state of provable facts asserted in support thereof; and (2) the movant establishes that the claimant could not possibly introduce evidence within the framework of the complaint sufficient to warrant a grant of the relief sought. . . . In deciding a motion to dismiss, all pleadings are to be construed most favorably to the party who filed them, and all doubts regarding such pleadings must be resolved in the filing party's favor.
Our review is de novo. Construed in its proper light, the complaint shows that on February 6, 2001, one year prior to the attack on Anna, a deranged convicted felon, William Cowart, walked into the school holding the picture of a young girl. Allred, the principal, confronted him; he left, and she called the police. Following this incident, the school instituted an access control policy which involved stationing an individual in the lobby to screen persons entering the school and ensure that they signed in at the principal's office, which was located adjacent to the lobby. The policy also required the principal and her office staff to monitor such persons through the office's floor-to-ceiling glass window.
The following year, on February 21, 2002, at approximately 2:50 p.m., Chad Brant Hagaman, a paranoid schizophrenic who heard voices telling him to kill people, walked through the school's front doors armed with a hammer. The complaint asserts that Hagaman was not confronted, screened, detained, or examined as to his purpose although he walked past the principal's office. Hagaman walked approximately 100- 150 feet until he came upon a row of fourth-grade students lined up in a hallway. When he reached ten-year-old Anna, Hagaman swung the hammer and embedded the claw end of it in her skull. The metal claws penetrat
Page 1 2 3 4 Georgia Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|