Opinion ID: 2595449
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Foreseeability of alleged harm caused by Billy.

Text: The superior court's primary basis for granting summary judgment was that Billy's actions were not foreseeable: Referring to certain language in DFYS guidelines, Plaintiffs suggest that ... but for the failure of DFYS to communicate such information, the injuries would not have occurred. The simplicity of such a theory has certain visceral appeal. But it is not one upon which the liability of DFYS can be predicated. Based upon all information available to DFYS at the time of placement, it was not foreseeable that [Billy] would engage in assaultive behavior towards the foster children. (Footnote omitted.) We often use the concept of foreseeability to determine the existence of a duty: if no harm is foreseeable from the defendant's conduct, then no duty is owed. [16] Yet here the superior court explicitly assumed that DFYS did owe a duty to the Greens, so its finding of unforeseeability necessarily addressed issues of causation and negligence rather than duty. We have upheld summary judgment on questions of tort duty when the undisputed facts support only one reasonable inference. [17] But in cases where no one disputes the existence of a duty running from one party to another, we have disfavored summary adjudication of the precise scope of that duty, or of whether particular conduct did or did not breach it (i.e., constitute negligence). [18] Yet, in this case, the state urges us to uphold the superior court's ruling because none of the allegedly undisclosed information here pointed specifically to the possibility that Billy might assault the Greens' children: It does not matter whether the predictive quality of the unfurnished information is analyzed in terms of whether there was a duty to reveal that information, whether the State breached any informative duty, or whether ignorance of the information was a proximate cause of the harm to the [Green] children. Regardless of the legal category to which foreseeability is assigned, the outcome is the same. Even assuming that the State should have known of and disclosed the information, disclosure would not have made [Billy's] assaultive behavior foreseeable. In pressing this argument, the state relies heavily on this court's recent decision in Dinsmore-Poff v. Alvord. [19] There, the parents of a young homicide victim sued the parents of his assailanta seventeen-year-old boy with a history of juvenile crimefor negligent supervision; in affirming summary judgment against the plaintiffs, we acknowledged that the assailant's parents were on notice of his general propensity for assaultive behavior, but we held that to prevail on a negligent supervision claim, a plaintiff must show more than a parent's general notice of a child's dangerous propensity. A plaintiff must show that the parent had reason to know with some specificity of a present opportunity and need to restrain the child to prevent some imminently foreseeable harm. General knowledge of past misconduct is, in other words, necessary but not sufficient for liability.[ [20] ] But Dinsmore-Poff and the other similar cases upon which the state relies [21] are readily distinguishable from the present case; the cause of action that they address is negligent supervision, a narrow theory of liability predicated on the supervisory duty over children that parents owe to the community at large. [22] As we emphasized in Dinsmore-Poff, the Restatement of Torts limits this cause of action to cases in which a parent knows or has reason to know that [the parent] has the ability to control [the] child, and ... knows or should know of the necessity and opportunity for exercising such control. [23] In requiring specific knowledge of imminently foreseeable harm, our opinion in Dinsmore-Poff did not construe or narrow the traditional foreseeability standard; rather, it interpreted and applied the Restatement's necessity and opportunity requirementa substantive element of a negligent supervision claim. [24] By contrast, we deal here not with a negligent supervision claim or with a general supervisory duty that the state owes to the public, but rather with the more specific duty of due care that DFYS owes prospective foster parentsa duty arising from the special relationship that the agency creates when it enlists adults to accept foster custody and places foster children in their homes. In this situation we apply the same conventional principles of foreseeability that we normally apply to questions of causation and negligence. We have generally recognized that a defendant's negligent conduct may be the legal or proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury if the negligent act was more likely than not a substantial factor in bringing about the injury. [25] The issue of proximate cause is normally a question of fact for the jury to decide and becomes a matter of law only where reasonable minds could not differ. [26] Negligence and causation necessarily involve foreseeable risks. [27] But in this context foreseeability does not imply an ability to predict precise actions or injuries: When the risk created causes damage in fact, insistence that the precise details of the intervening cause be foreseeable would subvert the purpose of that rule of law. [28] Thus, Prosser and Keeton note that there is quite universal agreement that what is required to be foreseeable is only the `general character' or `general type' of the event or the harm, and not its `precise' nature, details, or above all manner of occurrence. [29] Or as the Restatement puts it, [t]he fact that the actor, at the time of his negligent conduct, neither realized nor should have realized that it might cause harm to another of the particular kind or in the particular manner in which the harm has in fact occurred, is not of itself sufficient to prevent him from being liable for the other's harm if his conduct was negligent toward the other and was a substantial factor in bringing about the harm.[ [30] ] Prosser and Keeton observe that foreseeability is a question of the fundamental policy of the law, as to whether the defendant's responsibility should extend to such results. [31] The Restatement presents the analytical approach for answering this policy question as follows: The actor's conduct may be held not to be a legal cause of harm to another where after the event and looking back from the harm to the actor's negligent conduct, it appears to the court highly extraordinary that it should have brought about the harm. [32] Our own cases follow the same approach. [33] Its expansive view of foreseeability seldom warrants summary dismissal of a negligence claim on the ground of unforeseeability: Perhaps the Restatement has come close to expressing the underlying idea of a limitation of liability short of the remarkable, the preposterous, the highly unlikely, in the sometime language of the street the cock-eyed and far-fetched, even when we look at the event, as we must, after it has occurred.[ [34] ] In the present case, the superior court concluded as a matter of law that the information available to DFYS could not have allowed a reasonable person to predict Billy's subsequent assaults on the Greens' children. But the accuracy of this conclusion is beside the point for purposes of determining DFYS's potential liability. For as we have explained, foreseeability does not require an ability to predict precise actions and exact injuries. Considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the Greens, it does not seem highly extraordinary that DFYS's conduct should have brought about the harm allegedly committed. [35] Reasonable jurors applying the correct standard of foreseeability could properly conclude that McNutt's alleged description of Billy as a really good kid who had never been in trouble before and had no problems was highly misleading, that DFYS failed to make reasonable efforts to gather and disclose relevant information concerning Billy's background, that this failure exposed the Greens to a foreseeable and unjustifiable risk that Billy might engage in harmful actions, that the injuries he allegedly inflicted were of the general nature that could be expected, and that the Greens could have avoided these injuries either by declining to accept Billy as a foster child or by subjecting him to more rigorous supervisionhad they known what they were entitled to know. Accordingly, we conclude that the superior court erred in finding no genuine factual dispute on the issue of foreseeability and in granting summary judgment to the state on that basis.