School district may be liable for bullying on school bus

I have blogged before on cases that discuss whether a school or school district can be liable for bullying (see here).  Now comes news that a federal court in Pennsylvania recently allowed portions of a couple’s civil rights complaint to proceed against a school district after their autistic 6-year-old son was allegedly beaten on a school bus on two separate occasions. They have plausibly alleged certain school officials placed the child in harm’s way by ignoring warnings about another student with documented, violent behavior.  You find a link to the decision here.

Parents of teen who committed suicide sue Snapchat and other "apps" developers

A few days ago I posted a news story about a decision against Snapchat.  Yesterday, I posted a story about a new decision involving a suicide.  Tragically, today's story combines both themes.

Law & Crime is reporting that the mother of a teenager who took his own life after months of online harassment is suing Snapchat and the makers of third-party anonymous messaging apps YOLO and LMK, alleging that the products violated consumer protection laws by failing to comply with their own terms of service that promise safeguards against cyberbullying.

You can read more on the story and the complaint itself here.

Federal court rules that parents of a third grader who committed suicide have a cause of action against school board and school principal

 In a case that has a number of interesting implications the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has affirmed the denial of a motion to dismiss in a case involving the suicide of a young boy due to bullying in school.

The case involves a third grader who committed suicide after allegedly being the victim of multiple bullying incidents over a couple of years.  According to the complaint, school officials either downplayed the severity of incidents or flat out refused to notify them. Also, despite surveillance footage of the most recent incident, the school's principal and vice principal misrepresented the nature of Taye’s injuries to the boys parents.  

The parents sued the school board, and the principal and vice principal in their personal capacities.  The defendants filed a motion to dismiss which was denied by the lower court, and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

The case is interesting for a number of reasons.  First, there is the question of whether state immunity should protect the defendants.  

Second, there is the question of proximate cause.  Most often courts find that suicide is an unforeseeable intervening cause that severs the chain of causation preventing plaintiffs from supporting proximate cause.  However, in this case the court found that the boy’s suicide was plainly foreseeable, especially considering the school’s guidelines on bullying include suicide as a risk.

As I am sure you remember the prevailing test for proximate cause is to ask whether the injury is a foreseeable consequence of the risk created by the negligent conduct.  If the school guidelines actually mention suicide as a risk, it will be very difficult for the defendants to say that it was an unforeseeable consequence.

The case is called Myers v. Cincinnati Board of Education and you can find a copy here.

For more information on the case you can read stories in Law & Crime, and Courthouse News.

Court rules white nationalist must pay $14 million in damages for anti semitic campaign

A federal judge has ruled in an SPLC lawsuit that neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin must pay more than $14 million in damages for using his website to launch an antisemitic campaign of terror against a Jewish woman and her family.  You can read more about the story here and here. 

Lawsuit Blames Sorority Hazing for Athlete's Suicide

I recently published a short article on two recent cases on whether universities have a "duty to help" students by preventing injuries caused by other students or by protecting students from injuring themselves (including by attempting to commit suicide).  You can read it here.

With this in mind, I found it interesting to read that FindLaw is reporting that the mother of a Northwestern University basketball player that took her own life in early 2017 has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois court alleging that Jordan's sorority's hazing motivated her suicide.

I have not seen the complaint itself so I am not sure of the details, but from the stories I have read in the press, it appears the lawsuit is against the sorority and not against the University.

Podcast on Georgia case regarding parents liability for negligence in handling child's use of social media

A few days ago, I reported on a recent case in which the Georgia Appellate Court held that parents could be held liable for failing to supervise their children use of social media, or perhaps more importantly, for failing to act to remedy the consequences of the use of social media.  The case is interesting in its own right, but it was made more interesting because it was quickly misinterpreted, as I explained in my previous post.

The case also generated some attention because it was reported that it was the first case in which a court imposed a duty on parents to supervise a child's computer use.  Today, Bloomberg Law posted a podcast on the case that you can listen to here.  Among other things, one of the panelists explains how the case is not really creating new law as much as applying old principles to a new type of scenario.

Wall Street Journal mistakenly reports that Georgia Court held parents can be liable for conduct of their children

Last week, the Wall Street Journal law blog published a story titled "Parents May Be Liable for What Their Kids Post on Facebook, Court Rules" in which it stated "Parents can be held liable for what their kids post on Facebook, a Georgia appellate court ruled in a decision that lawyers said marked a legal precedent on the issue of parental responsibility over their children’s online activity."  The story was then picked up and repeated by Smithsonian, and The Legal Satyricon (which criticizes the decision as incorrect because it failed to consider a certain federal statute).

The case is interesting but the problem is that the headline of the reported story is wrong.  The court did not hold that parents can be held liable for their children's conduct; the court held the parents can only be held liable for their own conduct.  That is a big difference.

As the court explains in its opinion, "liability for the tort of a minor child is not imputed to the child’s parents merely on the basis of the parent-child relationship." In other words, there is no vicarious liability for the tort of a minor. However, as the court continues, "[p]arents may be held directly liable . . . for their own negligence in failing to supervise or control their child with regard to conduct which poses an unreasonable risk of harming others," a duty which extends to those plaintiffs whose harm is foreseeable.

In the case, called Boston v. Athearn which is available here. a boy (Dustin, age 13) and a girl agreed to have some fun at the plaintiff's expense.  Using some information obtained by the girl, Dustin created a fake Facebook page in the plaintiff's name where they posted racist, sexually graphic, offensive and false information including posts that suggested the plaintiff was a homosexual and a racist, that she took illegal drugs and that she was on medication for mental health disorders.

About six days after the Facebook page was created, the principal of the school had determined who had done it and imposed discipline.  As a result, the culprit's parents were informed in detail of the children's conduct.  Dustin's parents claimed they disciplined him, but made no effort to access the Facebook page or to delete it.  The page remained available for almost a year.

In response to a motion for summary judgment filed by Dustin's parents, the plaintiffs argued that there were questions of material fact regarding whether the defendants were negligent in failing to compel Dustin to remove the Facebook page once they were notified of its existence and the court agreed.

Again, let's reiterate that the issue here is not whether a parent should be held liable for the conduct of a child.  The issue is whether the court should impose liability for the parent's own conduct.  More to the point, whether the court should impose a duty on the parents to do something more than what they did.

Because this is not a case where the court is trying to impose a particular parenting style nor passing value judgment on parental decisions on how to raise a child, the case is simple.  The parents have a duty to act like a reasonable prudent person under the circumstances and, given the facts, reasonable people can disagree as to whether they did.  I am not even sure we need more facts to decide the question.   Let it go to the jury and let them decide.