Court Opinion

ID: 9664072
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:02:08.18474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:01.895982
License: Public Domain

ORDER DENYING PETITION FOR REHEARING
Appellant, defendant principal Jack Peterson, petitioning for rehearing, expresses grave concern that the effect of our decision denying the defense of discretionary immunity is “to subject administrators of public schools to liability for almost any conceivable mishap that might happen in the vast number of areas of the school.”
This concern is unfounded. Nothing in our opinion should be read to mean that school principals are never protected by the principle of discretionary immunity. The decision in this case is confined to its unique facts and on the narrow ground that, rather than exercising discretion, the appellant principal abdicated his responsibility by not acting at all. We have rejected the contention that he did not abdicate his responsibility and that “instead he delegated it to the experts as any good administrator should do.”
The young physical education teacher, in whose gymnastics class the plaintiff pupil was injured, was new to the teaching profession, and he had never been called upon to prepare and implement a lesson plan as a full-time physical education instructor. The teacher was new, too, to plaintiff’s class and had no knowledge of what the class had been taught in the past, important to a determination of whether this young pupil was prepared for the obviously hazardous exercise that resulted in paralyzing injury.
It should be noted that evidence from which the jury could find that defendant principal was negligent came from teaching professionals: a former principal, later a superintendent; a university professor of physical education curriculum; and a high school gymnastics coach and director of physical education. It was their testimony *126that gymnastics is an activity which can be more dangerous than other units of physical education and therefore requires carefully planned instruction; that a new teacher requires more careful supervision in the planning of his curriculum than an experienced teacher; and that a school principal should ensure that there is consultation with the new teacher as to what the class had learned and what it would be learning in the future. A principal, as a responsible school administrator, must exercise reasonable care in the discharge of such specific administrative responsibilities. These functions may not, without more, be entirely delegated by the responsible supervisor to others.
This most regrettable case for both the principal and the pupil prompted careful consideration at the outset and now on the petition for rehearing. Except as the petition makes apparent a misconception as to the scope of our holding, however, it raises no points not fully considered in our main opinion.
The petition accordingly must be and is denied.