Opinion ID: 1393970
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: athletic director.

Text: Appellee Robert Stewart was the athletic director at Waggener High School at the time of Yanero's injury. Stewart's primary duties as athletic director were to schedule athletic events and to maintain and schedule athletic facilities. He also supervised the head coaches who, in turn, supervised their assistant coaches. Stewart was not present in the gymnasium on the occasion of Yanero's injury. Yanero does not claim that Stewart is vicariously liable for the negligent acts of the coaches. Public officers are responsible only for their own misfeasance and negligence and are not responsible for the negligence of those employed by them if they have employed persons of suitable skill. Franklin County v. Malone, supra, at 199-200; Moores v. Fayette County, supra, at 414. Stewart did not hire the coaches, but he was a member of the school council that recommended that they be hired. Evaluating the credentials of a prospective employee is an inherently subjective process which, of course, is the essence of a discretionary function. However, there is also a ministerial aspect to the hiring process in that the person or persons to whom the hiring of subordinates is entrusted must at least attempt to hire someone who is not incompetent. Thus, there is authority for the proposition that a public officer can be subject to personal liability in tort for hiring an employee known to that officer to be incompetent to perform the task for which he/she was hired. Whitt v. Reed, supra, 239 S.W.2d at 491. Yanero asserts that Jeffrey Becker, who was hired as an assistant coach and assigned to help Allen Davis coach the junior varsity baseball team, had only a bachelor's degree in horticulture and had been previously employed primarily as a stock clerk at a supermarket. However, he had also coached seventh and eighth grade baseball at St. Pius X Elementary School in Louisville for six years prior to his employment at Waggener. Reasonable jurors could not believe that, by participating in the hiring of a person with six years of coaching experience, Stewart participated in hiring an employee known to him to be incompetent to perform the duties of an assistant baseball coach. Yanero also asserts that Stewart was negligent in failing to promulgate a written rule with specified penalties with respect to the wearing of helmets by student athletes during baseball batting practice. Yanero had been playing organized baseball for eleven years prior to his injury. He admits that every coach along the way, including Davis and Becker, had told him that he was required to wear a batting helmet during batting practice and that he simply chose to disregard this rule. Q. What was your understanding, if you can recall, of why you were to wear a batting helmet? A. Because it was dangerous.... If you got hit like in the head it would hurt and you would like get injured. Remarkably, Yanero posits that if the rule had been in writing with designated penalties he might have been more inclined to obey it. We reject this gratuitous speculation and conclude that since Yanero was aware of the rule, though unwritten, the failure to reduce the rule to writing did not cause his injury. We agree with Judge Mac Swinford's observation that tort liability will not be imposed for the failure to promulgate rules deemed necessary by a private litigant. Miller v. United States, 378 F.Supp. 1147, 1149 (E.D.Ky.1974), aff'd, 522 F.2d 386 (6th Cir.1975). Furthermore, rule-making is an inherently discretionary function. Franklin County v. Malone, supra, at 200. Thus, Stewart would be entitled to qualified (good faith) official immunity with respect to the performance of that function; and there is no basis for concluding that his failure to promulgate a written rule requiring student athletes to wear batting helmets during baseball batting practice violated any constitutional, statutory, or other clearly established right applicable to Yanero, or amounted to a willful or malicious intent to harm Yanero, or was the product of a corrupt motive, as discussed in Part III of this opinion, supra.