Opinion ID: 1116987
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Heading: Whether the Statute Prescribes a Duty to Repair Emotional Distress Damages

Text: To determine whether Sonya established that the school board employees owed her a special, direct duty that they breached, entitling her to recover emotional distress damages caused by the violations, we follow a method similar to that of determining whether a defendant may be held liable in a negligence case on the basis of his violation of a statute. The bases for delictual liability relied upon by Sonya are the fault of the defendant's special education attendant in failing to escort or to see Antonio safely across the street and the fault of the defendant's bus driver in failing to comply with the statute governing the receiving and discharging of children from school buses. In this review we focus on the fault of the bus driver because it stems from the breach of a statutory duty which clearly was owed to a motorist in Sonya's position. It is not necessary to analyze the attendant's duty to determine whether it encompassed a special, direct duty owed to the motorist. Under La.R.S. 32:80 the bus driver has a direct, non-delegable duty to protect the child and the motorist in this situation. The bus driver cannot rely on the attendant in the performance of his legal duties to protect children and motorists. The actions and omissions of the bus driver alone justify the assessment of 70% of the negligence in this case to the school board. The statute governing receiving and discharging children from school buses, La. R.S. 32:80, provides that a school bus driver must activate the bus's alternately flashing signal lights whenever he stops or is about to stop on the highway for the purpose of receiving or discharging children. La.R.S. 32:80(B)(1) and (2). The driver of a vehicle on a highway approaching a school bus that has stopped to receive or discharge school children must stop his vehicle not less than thirty feet from the school bus when its signal lights are flashing and not proceed until its signals are off or the bus resumes its trip. La.R.S. 32:80(A)(1). Any motorist convicted of violating this law shall be subject to a fine or imprisonment, or both. La.R.S. 32:80(A)(4). A school bus driver is authorized to notify law officials of a violation of this law, and a citation may be issued on the basis of such notice to the owner or lessee of a vehicle involved in a violation. La.R.S. 32:80(A)(3). The process by which a child crosses an open highway to board or disembark from a school bus is charged with danger. Accordingly, the legislature has enacted the most stringent provisions feasible to safeguard the entire operation. The child, the bus driver and the motorist are constituents of this process, bound together legally and practically in a special, exigent relationship, from the moment the bus stops and signals until the child is safely across the roadway. See Westerfield v. LaFleur, 493 So.2d 600, 605 (1986). If the school bus driver and the motorist perform their duties properly, a child who crosses a typical roadway while leaving or entering an immobile signalized school bus is guarded from harm by a legal cordon during the entire time he is traversing the roadway. He and his parents are entitled to rely for his safe passage upon the motorist's observance of the safety zone and the bus driver's performance of his duty to activate highly visible signals, await the child's safe passage and report any motorist's violation of the legally protected passageway. The injury or death of a child during the protected receiving or discharge procedure can result in severe consequences for even an innocent motorist including criminal prosecution, civil damage suits, and moral opprobrium. Id. It is clear that the bus driver in the present case violated her duties to await the safe passage of the child and to refrain from prematurely deactivating the signals or resuming her trip. It is equally apparent that the busperson's breach of the statutory duty caused the damage. Sonya is entitled to the presumption that she would have heeded a proper warning, and there is nothing in the record to indicate that she would have failed to do so. Bloxom v. Bloxom, 512 So.2d 839, 850 (La. 1987); Vickers v. Chiles Drilling Co., 882 F.2d 158 (5th Cir.1989). In determining whether the bus driver's violation was a breach of a delictual duty owed specially and directly to Sonya it is necessary to examine the purposes of the legislation and decide (1) whether Sonya falls within the class of persons it was intended to protect and (2) whether the harm complained of was of the kind which the statute was intended, in general, to prevent. See Carter v. City Parish Government of East Baton Rouge, 423 So.2d 1080 (La.1982); Boyer v. Johnson, 360 So.2d 1164 (La. 1978); Prosser & Keeton, supra § 36 at 225. Having examined the provisions of the statute, we conclude that by vesting the bus driver with authority similar to that of a policeman to direct the motorist's use of the highway under pain of criminal penalty the legislature has also imposed upon the bus driver the duty to perform his role properly for the benefit of the motorist. Consequently, the motorist is required and entitled to rely for his safety, convenience and peace of mind upon the bus driver's performance of his duty to activate highly visible signals, await the child's safe passage and remain as a stationary sentinel until the child's security is clearly assured. It is obvious that the bus driver's dereliction may result in minimal to extreme consequences for the motorist including his fright at a near miss, his own physical injury or property damage, or his serious emotional and mental illness associated with a child's injury or death, as in the present case. Moreover, it is evident that the bus driver's duty is owed not only to the careful motorist but also to the inattentive driver who may have relied on the busman's signals or lack thereof. Although the bus driver's duty is not imposed to protect the utterly indifferent or foolhardy, its protection is not restricted to those whose senses are precisely attuned to the prospect of the particular danger encountered. The evidence does not indicate that Sonya would have been oblivious to the flashing signals had they been activated or to the motionlessness of the bus had it remained stationary. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that if such warnings had been given, Antonio's tragic death would have been avoided as well as Sonya's emotional distress and illness. See Levi v. SLEMCO, 542 So.2d 1081, 1089 (La.1989); Malone, Cause In Fact, 9 Stanford L.Rev. (1956). By the same token, we believe that the harm that befell Sonya was within the class of harms that the statute was intended to guard against. Cf. Carter v. City Parish Government of East Baton Rouge, 423 So.2d 1080 (La.1983). The accident resulted from exactly the kind of risk which the statute was designed to prevent. Cf. Boyer v. Johnson, 360 So.2d 1164 (La.1978); Smolinski v. Taulli, 276 So.2d 286 (La. 1973). Sonya's damage was included within the same general risk, or class of risk, at which the statute is directed. In the absence or any other guide in the legislation itself, a statute may well be assumed to include all risks that reasonably may be anticipated as likely to follow from its violation. Prosser & Keeton, supra § 36 at 226-27 n. 65, 66. It is reasonable to expect that a motorist who unexpectedly encounters a small child in the roadway after a school bus has extinguished its warning lights and has departed may become involved in various types of accidents. It is also predictable that some of these mishaps will foreseeably lead to either physical or emotional trauma, or both, for the motorist involved. For all of these reasons, and because the motorist is placed in a position of reliance by the law and the acts or omissions of the school bus driver, it would not be just to deny the motorist recovery for any damage attributable to the bus driver's negligence. Moreover, in this type of case the plaintiff-motorist usually will be a percipient witness to the injury, and her claim of serious emotional distress can be considered in light of the objective circumstances of the accident and injury absent the complicating factor of any personal relationship with the direct victim. Consequently, we conclude that in the narrow class of cases involving the direct, special statutory duty owed to the motorist, there is no justification for the creation of juristic limitations upon the principle of reparation underlying Civil Code Article 2315. Accordingly, Sonya should be permitted to recover for her severe emotional distress and other consequent injuries that were found to be genuine by each lower court and conceded to be proven by the defendant.