The Law of Higher Education. William A. Kaplin
college. As part of the course, the students were required to learn to climb a utility pole. The plaintiff, a student in the class, climbed the pole, lost his grip, fell, and was seriously injured. His lawsuit alleged negligence on the part of the college in not providing him with a safe environment.
The trial court awarded summary judgment to the college, but the appellate court reversed, ruling that there was a special relationship between the college and the student. Despite the fact that the premises were also under the control of SRP, said the court, the college also had a duty not to expose its students to an unreasonable risk of harm. Furthermore, the student was acting under the supervision of a college instructor. The case was remanded for a trial court's determination as to whether the college breached its duty to the plaintiff.
A significant decision by a Florida appellate court addressed the liability of a college to a student injured at the site of an off-campus internship. In Gross v. Family Services Agency and Nova Southeastern University, Inc., 716 So.2d 337 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1998), the plaintiff had enrolled in the doctoral program in psychology at Nova Southeastern University. The program required her to complete an 11-month practicum at an off-campus organization. Nova gave each student a list of preapproved practicum sites, and students selected six possible sites. Nova controlled the placement of students at the sites. Gross was placed at Family Services Agency, approximately 15 miles from the university. One evening, while leaving the agency, Gross was assaulted by a man in the agency's parking lot and was injured. Previous assaults had occurred in the parking lot, a fact of which the university was aware but the student was not. The student sued the university for negligence in assigning her to an unreasonably dangerous internship site without adequate warning. She also sued the agency, which settled her claim.
Although the trial court awarded summary judgment to the university, stating that it had no duty to control the agency's parking lot, the appellate court reversed. The court rejected the trial court's determination that this was a premises liability case, characterizing the college's duty as one of exercising “reasonable care in assigning [the student] to an internship site, including the duty to warn her of foreseeable and unreasonable risks of injury” (716 So.2d at 337). The court characterized the relationship between the student and the university as “an adult who pays a fee for services [the student] and the provider of those services [the university].” Therefore, said the court, the university had a duty to use ordinary care in providing educational services and programs. If the student was injured by the acts of a third party, then the university would be liable only if a special relationship existed. The court ruled that a special relationship did exist in this situation, relying upon a case involving litigation by a British tourist who sued a car rental company for failure to warn customers about the risk of crime in certain areas of Miami. The car agency's knowledge of the risk of crime, and the fact that the tourist was not from the United States, created a special duty, said that court, to warn the foreign tourist of “foreseeable criminal conduct” (Shurben v. Dollar Rent-A-Car, 676 So.2d 467 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1996)). So, too, the university had a duty to warn the student of the risk of assault, given its knowledge that previous assaults had occurred in the vicinity.
The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed the appellate court's ruling on the issue of the university's duty to warn the student (Nova Southeastern University v. Gross, 758 So.2d 86 (Fla. 2000)). In addition to agreeing with the appellate court's reasoning that the university had assumed a duty of “acting reasonably in making [those] assignments” to a specific location, the court declared: “There is no reason why a university may act without regard to the consequences of its actions while every other legal entity is charged with acting as a reasonably prudent person would in like or similar circumstances” (758 So.2d at 90). The court stated that the college's duty was one of reasonableness in assigning students to practicum locations, a duty that required the university to warn students of potential dangers posed by that location.
Universities and their employees may also face negligence liability claims for actions by third parties at off-campus locations. In Rinsky v. Trustees of Boston University, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 136876 (D. Mass. December 27, 2010), a social work student was required to complete an internship at a social service agency as part of her academic program. The student notified both the faculty supervisors and the on-site supervisor that a client was physically touching and stalking her. She alleged that neither the on-site supervisor nor the faculty members took action either to stop the offensive touching or to assign her to a different internship. She sued both the agency and the university for sexual harassment, negligence, and several other tort claims. The court rejected the university's motion to dismiss the student's negligence and sexual harassment claims.
For negligence liability purposes, then, whether the location at which a student or staff member is injured is on or off campus is not the controlling issue. What is more important, according to these cases, is whether the college took adequate precautions to ensure the safety of its students, even if it did not have total physical control of the site.
Simply because a student has an off-campus assignment does not mean that the college assumes a duty to ensure that the student arrives at the off-campus location safely. In Stockinger v. Feather River Community College, 4 Cal. Rptr. 3d 385 (Cal. Ct. App. 2003), a student who was injured when she was riding to an off-campus assignment in the back of a classmate's pickup truck sued the college and the course instructor for negligence in planning and supervising the class assignment. The court rejected her claim, ruling that “a college must be able to give its students off-campus assignments, without specifying the mode of transportation, and without being saddled with liability for accidents that occur in the process of transportation” (4 Cal. Rptr. at 401).
Study abroad programs may present liability issues for colleges as well. Since the mid-1990s, several colleges have been sued by students, or their families, for injuries or deaths to students participating in study abroad programs. Although the courts have rejected claims that a college that sponsors a study abroad program is the insurer of students' safety, the courts are imposing a duty of reasonable care on colleges and universities that requires them to take steps to protect students, faculty, and staff from reasonably foreseeable harm. Particularly if the program takes place in a country, or in a portion of a country, that is deemed unsafe or prone to criminal activity, considerable precautions will need to be taken by the college.
For example, St. Mary's College (a public college in Maryland) settled a lawsuit filed by three students who were injured during a study abroad trip to Guatemala. While a group of 13 students, two faculty members, and the study abroad director were returning by bus to Guatemala City from a trip to a rural area, the bus was stopped by armed bandits and robbed. Five of the students were raped. Three of the students sued the college, arguing that insufficient precautions were taken for their safety and that additional precautions, such as an armed guard, a convoy of several vehicles, and the selection of a safer route would have prevented the injuries. The college argued that sufficient precautions had been taken and that, because previous study abroad trips to Guatemala had been uneventful, the injuries were not foreseeable. However, the college settled with the plaintiffs in order to avoid prolonging the dispute.
A student was unsuccessful in persuading a Minnesota court to impose liability on the University of Minnesota for an assault by a taxi driver in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where the student was participating in a study abroad program. In Bloss v. University of Minnesota, 590 N.W.2d 661 (Minn. Ct. App. 1999), the student asserted that the university was negligent in not obtaining housing closer to the location of the classes, in not providing safe transportation to and from campus, and in not warning the students about the possibility of assault. The court ruled that governmental immunity protected the university from liability for its decision to use host families to house the students. But with respect to the student's allegations concerning safety issues, immunity would not protect the university if it had breached its duty in that regard. In this case, however, the court ruled that the university had behaved reasonably. There was no history of assaults on students or tourists in the 18 years that the program had operated in Cuernavaca. Students had been given a mandatory orientation session on safety and had been told not to hail a taxi on the street (which the student had done), but to call a taxi company. The assault occurred when the student took a taxi to meet friends—not to attend class.