Court Opinion

ID: 9614693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:27:15.984864+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:38.214076
License: Public Domain

Judge Phillips
dissenting.
In my opinion whether defendant Bass’s alleged abuse of plaintiff occurred within the scope of his employment by the school board is a question of fact, not law, and the claim against the board on that ground was erroneously dismissed. Bass’s scope of employment was not confined to doing good, as the majority implicitly holds. As principal his job was to operate the school and control the children while school was in session; and according to plaintiff’s evidence, his abuse of her occurred during school hours in his office where she went pursuant to his directive. Thus, her materials indicate that Bass’s abuse arose out of his job related *417authority and circumstances that the law of this state and the school board operating under it created. For the board assigned her to that school and she was required to attend it and obey those placed over her, and in obeying his instructions to go to his office she was abused. Since the board endowed Bass with authority and control over the school and Bass exercised that authority to abuse plaintiff, it can be reasonably inferred, it seems to me, that the board’s work of operating the school and controlling the children was very definitely involved in plaintiff’s abuse. That the board did not authorize Bass’s wrongful act is beside the point, as only criminals such as the Mafia hire people to do wrong; and those who conduct their business through others are as accountable for their employees’ mishaps as they are entitled to profit from their beneficial acts. This decision ironically and unjustly would leave beyond the law’s pale the rights of all children of this state who daily follow the law’s mandate and submit themselves to the dominion of school, kindergarten and day care officials and suffer because of it. I do not believe the law requires any such thing.
I also am of the opinion that it was error to dismiss the claim against Superintendent Smith for negligently investigating the report of Bass’s past sexual abuses. For defendant’s materials indicate that though his reported activities and tendencies were most serious for one having control of small children, only a haphazard, inept, token investigation was conducted; indeed, instead of establishing as a matter of law that the investigation was accomplished with either diligence or due care, they support the inference, in my view, that it was negligently conducted.