Running head: TORT AND LIABILITY 1

Artifact 5

Tort and Liability

Seidy Portillo

College of Southern Nevada

TORT AND LIABILITY 2

Abstract

Middle school student Ray Night was suspended and given a note to inform his parents of the

suspension. Ray got rid of the note and his parents were never aware of their sons suspension.

On his first day of suspension Ray went to a friend’s house and was shot while there. In this

paper I will discuss feasible outcomes. I will evaluate whether Ray’s parents have justifiable

reasons to create liability charges against school officials.

TORT AND LIABILITY 3

Artifact 5

Tort and Liability

Ray Knight is a middle school student who got suspended for having too many unexcused

absences. The school districts protocol is to send a notification to parents of their child’s

suspension by telephone and a mail delivered written notice. The school gave Ray the written

notice for him to show his parents, but he threw it away. While at a friend’s house during his first

day of suspension, Ray was accidentally shot.

Plantiffs Ray and his parents argue that the district was negligent and did not abide by

their protocol of sending a call to the parents and sending the letter home. If the parents had

gotten a phone call, then Ray would not have left that first day of suspension. Ray should have

not been given the written notice to give to his parents, instead if should have been sent in the

mail. The school failed to provide adequate supervision of the child when they were sent home

with the notice. This has already been settled in the case Goss versus Lopez. Schools need to give

students who face suspension a warning and a hearing, as well as informing their parents.

Negligence depends on the administrators training and experience, and whether they would have

acted the same under alike circumstances. In this case the staff member who sends notices of

student suspensions to parents should be held liable: as they were neglecting their duties and not

making sure the parents were made aware of their child’s suspension. Events leading up to the

event of his shooting were foreseeable: as they should have expected that the middle school

student would not inform his parents of his absenteeism, and suspension. In the Court case of

Warrington v. Tempe Elementary, a young boy named Andrew was hit by a car after being

dropped of by the school bus at his normal stop. The jury found proximate cause, and it was

decided that the Duty failed to protect Andrew from a foreseeable risk of unreasonable harm.
TORT AND LIABILITY 4

This district did the same thing with Knight because they knew what they were doing when

giving a middle school student a notice to send home, and nothing else. Therefore the district

should be held accountable, according to the plaintiffs.

Defendants take the some of the same arguments and use them in their favor. They state

that the school could not have foreseen the risks. Knight could have been injured on any other

day while visiting his friend, there was nothing that could have been done leading up to the event

to have stopped the shooting from occurring. The district also has no duty to protect Ray Knight,

as he is a truant student. In the case of Doe versus San Antonio, a female student left school

without authorization, and was sexually assaulted while off school grounds. She did not have a

foreseeable injury and the district was not responsible for her supervision, it was then that the

courts decided that schools are not expected to protect truant students. Court cases Sanford

versus Stiles and Swan versus Town of Brookhaven App. Division both support the school. In the

Sanford case, it was ruled that there was no liability when a student committed suicide while at

home. In the 2006 Swan case, an 11-year-old injured himself while on a slide. No amount of

supervision would have prevented the eleven-year old’s injury. It was not in the intent of any

employee with in the school district that Knight be shot, but it simply happened out of the control

and scope of the teachers and administrators.

I believe that the plaintiff has justifiable reasons to create liability charges against the

school district, because officials failed to send parents a direct notification and did not abide by

protocol. Thus, making them negligent to their duties. The school should have seen reasonably

foreseeable risk by not ensuring the parents be made aware of their middle school sons’

suspension. Although the case did not happen on school grounds, it likely would not have

happened if the parents knew where Ray was that day, but they thought he was in school.
TORT AND LIABILITY 5

References

FindLaw's Court of Appeals Arizona case and opinions. (2018). Retrieved October 7, 2018, from

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/az-court-of-appeals/141511.html

Goss v. Lopez. (n.d.) Oyez. Retrieved October 7, 2018, from

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1974/73-898

McCabe, N.H, McCarthy, M.M, Eckes, S.E. (2014) Teachers Substantive Constitutional Rights.

Legal Rights of Teachers and Students (pp.20-142). Bloomington, Indiana. Pearson

Education.