Opinion ID: 1801833
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Negligence Per Se Count

Text: (6) As an alternative theory of liability, plaintiff charged defendants with negligence per se arising from breach of their statutory duty, as the Reporting Act requires, to report to the authorities the various incidents of sexual misconduct involving Gadams. Such a breach, if proved, would raise a presumption that defendants failed to exercise due care. (See Evid. Code, § 669, subd. (a); Landeros v. Flood (1976) 17 Cal.3d 399, 413-414 [131 Cal. Rptr. 69, 551 P.2d 389, 97 A.L.R.3d 324] [negligence per se liability arising from failure to comply with Reporting Act provision requiring reporting of child physical abuse].) The Court of Appeal majority concluded that plaintiff's complaint stated a cause of action for negligence per se, based on defendants' alleged breach of their statutory duty. The Court of Appeal reasoned that the Reporting Act required defendants to report known or reasonably suspected incidents of child abuse to a child protective agency (which would include law enforcement agencies). (Pen. Code, § 11166, subd. (a).) The court believed plaintiff's complaint adequately pleaded that defendants knew acts of child abuse had occurred within the meaning of the Reporting Act. The dissenting justice in the Court of Appeal concluded that plaintiff's complaint failed to state a cause of action for negligence per se because she alleged insufficient facts to show defendants violated Penal Code section 11166, the reporting provision. According to the dissent, plaintiff failed to allege that defendants knew or had observed any abused child, or that they knew of any actual physical or sexual assaults or exploitation, as defined in Penal Code section 11165.1. We need not decide whether the complaint's allegations are sufficient to allege defendants knew or suspected reportable child abuse, because it is clear plaintiff was not a member of the class for whose protection the Reporting Act was enacted. Defendant school districts were never the custodians of plaintiff, a Livingston student and, accordingly, owed her no obligations under the act. Evidence Code section 669 creates a presumption of negligence arising from violation of a statute, but only if [t]he person suffering the ... injury ... was one of the class of persons for whose protection the statute ... was adopted. (Evid. Code, § 669, subd. (a)(4); see 6 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law, supra, Torts, § 819, p. 172.) The duty to report under the Reporting Act (see Pen. Code, § 11166) applies to a child care custodian (which would include a school district) who has knowledge of or observes a child, in his or her professional capacity or within the scope of his or her employment, whom he or she knows or reasonably suspects has been the victim of child abuse (which includes sexual abuse). Reasonably construed, the act was intended to protect only those children in the custodial care of the person charged with reporting the abuse, and not all children who may at some future time be abused by the same offender. Plaintiff fails to allege that she was ever in defendants' custodial care, or even that defendants were aware that Gadams had molested her. To adopt plaintiff's contrary argument would impose a broader reporting obligation than the Legislature intended. Under plaintiff's interpretation of the Reporting Act, a child care custodian that fails to report suspected child abuse affecting one child in its care or custody could be held liable, perhaps years later, to any other children abused by the same person, whether or not those children were within its custodial protection. Neither legislative intent nor public policy would support such a broad extension of liability.