Court Opinion

ID: 9568056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:00:24.509206+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:24:18.004382
License: Public Domain

Blackburn, Judge,
concurring specially.
I generally agree with the majority opinion that this action involves a claim for negligent supervision of a child, rather than a proprietor’s liability to a patron for the criminal acts of a third party, and that a jury question exists as to duty of care assumed and breached by the defendant. However, I would further find that the criminal act perpetrated against the unsupervised child in this case was foreseeable as a matter of law.
A primary purpose of supervising a child is to protect the child from harm. A child of tender years is especially vulnerable to a host of hazards to which he or she may be exposed or which he or she may create in the absence of supervision, control and protection. Some of those hazards are commonplace and obvious, such as the dangers presented by crossing a street, exposure to the elements, getting lost, climbing a tree, playing with fire, or even a dog bite. Such dangers are within the general course of human probabilities, and if an unsupervised child suffered an injury as a consequence of being subjected to one of these risks, any argument that the danger was unforeseeable would not stand. Likewise, the risk of a criminal act being perpetrated against a child is one of the harms from which a child must be protected by one assuming care and control of the child. It is unnecessary to prove that the specific criminal act was foreseeable where a duty exists to protect a child from general criminal acts. Any *538argument that it is unforeseeable that a child of tender years who is allowed to wander off may fall prey to a predator violates reason, nature, common sense and the very substance of the duty of care owed to the child.
In a cause of action based upon the negligent failure to supervise a child, after the duty to supervise has been established, the most critical question is whether the child was exposed to and injured by one of the general types of harm which supervision is intended to guard against in the first place, and to which the child would not have been subjected in the absence of the failure to supervise. The risk of criminal harm to one’s child tops the list of indisputable hazards from which parents attempt to protect their children by supervision. With what risk would one replace this concern and from what list would it be excluded? “Inextricably entwined with concepts of negligence and proximate cause is a notion of foreseeability, not foreseeability as to the particular harm but that some harm would occur.” (Citations and punctuation omitted.) Brandvain v. Ridgeview Inst., 188 Ga. App. 106, 115 (373 SE2d 265) (1988). Foreseeability is usually a question for the jury, but in “plain, palpable and undisputable” cases, the issue may be decided as a matter of law. Knudson v. Lenny’s, 202 Ga. App. 85 (413 SE2d 258) (1991). In the instant case, I believe that the foreseeability of the risk of criminal harm to the unsupervised child may be decided affirmatively as a matter of law as there could be no other conclusion under the facts of this case.