Court Opinion

ID: 9797182
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:14:46.472706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:52:59.564097
License: Public Domain

RASMUSSEN, J. pro tempore,
concurring.
In my view, the controlling issue in this case is whether or not plaintiff acquired information, prior to October 28, 2003, that would cause a reasonable person to inquire into whether defendant might be culpable for her injuries. With respect to the summary judgment standard, the facts that are material to plaintiffs duty to inquire are those that, if pursued, would tend to lead to the discovery of any causal relationship that may have existed between Stephens’s rape of plaintiff and defendant’s supervision of Stephens when the rape occurred. The information that was communicated to plaintiff by her parents in December 2003 regarding defendant’s supervision of Stephens constitutes actual knowledge and is thus immaterial to the inquiry notice analysis. The inquiry notice standard would be eviscerated if plaintiff were required to possess actual knowledge as a predicate to her duty to inquire.
Although the facts relevant to inquiry notice should not and cannot be equated with the facts relevant to actual notice, on the evidence in this record, a rational juror could conclude that plaintiff lacked sufficient information to trigger a duty to inquire into the existence of any relationship between defendant and Stephens at the time of the rape. *601Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority in this case.