declining to preclude proximate cause as a matter of law where alleged negligence was allowing unsupervised students to enter dark, secluded room within school auditorium, where plaintiff was raped by other students who took her to that room
How later courts described this case
- declining to preclude proximate cause as a matter of law where alleged negligence was allowing unsupervised students to enter dark, secluded room within school auditorium, where plaintiff was raped by other students who took her to that room
- holding high school had 12 a duty to protect students from rape by other students because the “harm fell within 13 a general field of danger which should have been anticipated”
- holding that a school has a duty to protect students from reasonably anticipated dangers
- liability of school district is to be determined according to the normal rules of tort law
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Olson, J.
(dissenting)—I cannot subscribe to the view of the majority that the well-pleaded facts or the reasonable inferences from the facts well pleaded in this case require the court to submit to a jury the issue of whether or not the school district reasonably should have anticipated that a darkened room, available to school boys and girls as was this room, might be utilized during periods of unsupervised play for acts of indecency. In this regard, we have before us only the pleader’s conclusion, unsupported by allegations of fact sufficient to sustain it. In my opinion, the trial court was correct in its ruling on the demurrer.
Mallery, Hill, and Donworth, JJ., concur with Olson, J.