Opinion ID: 1425563
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Tort claims under state law

Text: S.S.'s complaint also asserted two causes of action against Vance and Rini under Kentucky state law: negligence and outrageous conduct (the latter also being known as intentional infliction of emotional distress). Vance and Rini are alleged to have acted negligently and outrageously by repeatedly ignoring Plaintiff's requests for help, creating an atmosphere of hostility toward Plaintiff and his disabilities, and refusing to stop the persistent harassment and abuse by other students at Model. The district court granted summary judgment for Model on both claims, concluding that S.S.'s negligence claim failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact and similarly finding that the record contained no evidence on which a jury could find that Vance's and Rini's conduct offend[ed] against the generally accepted standards of decency and morality. For purposes of S.S.'s negligence claim, the special relationship ... formed between a school district and its students imposes an affirmative duty on the district, its faculty, and its administrators to take all reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to its students. See Williams v. Ky. Dep't of Educ., 113 S.W.3d 145, 148 (Ky.2003) (internal quotation marks omitted). S.S.'s allegations of negligence, however, are simply not supported by the evidence in the record for the same reasons discussed in Part II.C. above. If anything, the record supports the district court's conclusion that Vance's and Rini's conductinvestigating S.S.'s complaints, disciplining the students responsible for harassment, monitoring S.S., and educating the students generally about name-calling and sexual harassmentwas reasonable and satisfied the very duty that S.S. alleges they breached. S.S.'s claim of outrageous conduct fails for the same reason. The cause of action for the intentional infliction of emotion distress is intended to redress behavior that is truly outrageous, intolerable and which results in bringing one to his knees. Osborne v. Payne, 31 S.W.3d 911, 914 (Ky.2000). Four elements must be satisfied in order to state such a claim: [1][t]he wrongdoer's conduct must be intentional or reckless; [2] the conduct must be outrageous and intolerable in that it offends against the generally accepted standards of decency and morality; [3] there must be a causal connection between the wrongdoer's conduct and the emotional distress[;] and [4] the distress suffered must be severe. Id. at 913-14. We agree with the district court that no reasonable jury could find that Vance's and Rini's responses to S.S.'s complaints of harassment were in any way outrageous, intolerable, or offensive to generally accepted standards of decency.