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Shin v. Sunriver Preparatory School4/27/2005
the party who owes the duty to exercise independent judgment in the former party's behalf and in the former party's interests. In doing so, the party who is owed the duty is placed in a position of reliance upon the party who owes the duty; that is, because the former has given responsibility and control over the situation at issue to the latter, the former has a right to rely upon the latter to achieve a desired outcome or resolution."
Curtis, 148 Or App at 619 (quoting Conway, 324 Or at 239-40) (emphasis in Conway)). Our task, then, is to examine whether the evidence here, viewed most favorably to plaintiff, would permit a jury to find that Sunriver Prep assumed such a heightened duty of care on plaintiff's behalf.
We are persuaded that a jury could so find. Sunriver Prep was not at all like a typical high school; it was, in the words of its president, a "boarding school" that "act in the parental role" for plaintiff and others who lived in the International House and with homestay parents, whom the school specially approved. The International House contract, which was approved by the school, provided that plaintiff was subject to " ll school rules" and the house parents' supervision not only while on campus but "24 hours a day, 7 days a week." Once King approved plaintiff's move into the Wheeler residence under the homestay program, the homestay agreement vested in the Wheelers a profound level of control over plaintiff's life--understandably, given her youth and the thousands of miles that separated her from her parents. Although there was evidence that Sunriver Prep did not always enforce strict adherence to the homestay agreement, a jury could reasonably conclude that the agreement, by its very terms, defined the school's "fundamental expectations" and established the homestay parents' power to restrict the student's dating, social activities, and telephone privileges; to enforce curfews; and to set requirements for studying. The agreement included the expectation that homestay parents must know the student's whereabouts at all times and authorized homestay parents to resolve conflicts with the student according to a template that called for the parents' involvement not at the beginning of the conflict but only as a last resort, if all else had failed. If the student required medical care, the homestay parents were authorized to secure it and inform the parents later. And, like the International House contract, the homestay agreement included the proviso that " ll school rules * * * are in effect 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for homestay students."
The agreement is not the only means of defining the parties' relationship; consistently with that agreement, Sunriver Prep's agents did in fact exercise independent judgment on plaintiff's behalf. Wheeler took plaintiff to the doctor when she showed signs of anxiety and depression; she made efforts to protect plaintiff from her abusive father in consultation with law enforcement officials; she hospitalized plaintiff when plaintiff disclosed that she was feeling suicidal. King likewise exercised control over plaintiff's important affairs, demanding and securing Kang's signature on medical releases and arranging for counseling appointments that she required plaintiff to attend. Indeed, when a calendaring conflict arose between an appointment that plaintiff had previously arranged and an appointment that King had arranged for her, Goldsmith insisted that the latter appointment took precedence. Finally, when Kang rescinded the medical releases at plaintiff's urging, King immediately expelled plaintiff from school and forbade Wheeler (who had been acting as her "mom") and Lee from providing housing for plaintiff. Had Lee's intervention fa
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