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School Not Liable for Injury to Student Crossing Street to Enter School–Student Was Not In the Custody or Control of the School When He Was Injured

The Fourth Department determined that plaintiff’s son was not yet in the custody or control of the school when he was injured. Summary judgment dismissing the complaint was therefore required.  Plaintiff had dropped her son off across the street from the school, and told him to stay there while she directed cars to a parking area for an upcoming lacrosse game (in which plaintiff’s son was to participate). A teammate told the plaintiff’s son to go to the school to check in with the coach.  He was injured crossing the street:

…[I]t is well settled that “[t]he duty of a school district to its students is strictly limited by time and space and exists only so long as a student is in its care and custody” … . We reject plaintiff’s contention that defendants owed plaintiff’s son a duty of care under the circumstances here. When plaintiff dropped off her son and told him to “stay there,” she made a parental decision to keep her son across the street because she was concerned about him “crossing over” given that there was “lots of traffic” in the intersection where the accident occurred. Thus, plaintiff had not relinquished control of her son, and defendants had not yet gained the physical custody or control of him that is a prerequisite to imposing a legal duty on them … . The fact that plaintiff’s son disobeyed plaintiff’s directive and crossed the street does not change that legal result.

We reject plaintiff’s further contention that defendants owed plaintiff’s son a duty because the defendants placed plaintiff’s son in a “for[e]seeably dangerous setting that the [defendants] had a hand in creating.” Because the child was never in the physical custody or control of the defendants, however, the defendants were “never in a position to . . . release [plaintiff’s son] into a hazardous setting … . Ritchie v Churchville-Chili Cent School Dist, 2014 NY Slip Op 07792, 4th Dept 11-14-14

 

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