Court Opinion

ID: 9561682
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:14:05.371065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:10.758346
License: Public Domain

McMurray, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially and dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority in holding that members of the Board of Education and Superintendent James Hagin are immune from individual liability based on official immunity, but not for the reason given. I believe official immunity protects the Board of Education and Superintendent James Hagin because these school officials complied with OCGA § 20-2-59 by endorsing Morgan County High School’s rule pertaining to early dismissal of children from school. I cannot endorse, however, the majority’s holding that the school’s vocational secretary (Amy Greenway) was vested with discretionary power to allow the Perkins’ 14-year-old child to leave campus without transportation and without being “signed out in the main office by the parents or [an] authorized person. . . .”
“ ‘ “(I)n Georgia the distinction between a ministerial and a discretionary act, and therefore the scope of the immunity granted a public official in any given situation, turns upon the specific character of the complained-of act, not the more general nature of the job. Partain v. Maddox, (131 Ga. App. 778, 783 (206 SE2d 618) (1974)); Price v. Owen, (67 Ga. App. 58 (19 SE2d 529) (1942)). Under this standard it makes no difference that the official is required to perform discretionary acts if the complained-of act is more properly characterized as ministerial. The grant of qualified immunity, then, is really more in the nature of a transitory privilege rooted in the fear that a contrary rule would inhibit the judgment upon which good government rests. The single overriding factor is whether the specific *838act from which liability allegedly arises is discretionary or ministerial.” Miree v. United States, 490 FSupp. 768, 773 (1980).’ Shuman v. Dyess, 175 Ga. App. 213, 216 (333 SE2d 379). This determination is made on a case-by-case basis. Id. at 215.” Swofford v. Cooper, 184 Ga. App. 50, 52 (1) (360 SE2d 624), aff’d, 258 Ga. 143 (368 SE2d 518).
Decided August 26, 1996
Reconsideration denied September 20, 1996
John M. Clark, Eric E. Wyatt, for appellants.
Chambers, Mabry, McClelland & Brooks, Lawrence J. Hogan, *839Beth S. Reeves, Lambert & Roffman, Allan R. Roffman, for appellees.
*838In the case sub judice, Secretary Greenway admitted that she was aware that the school’s rules provide that “[a]ny student who is to be dismissed early be signed out in the main office by the [student’s] parents or authorized person before leaving campus. ...” I believe the mandatory language of this rule left no room for discretionary variance, but required Secretary Greenway to perform the ministerial task of making sure the Perkins’ child was “signed out [of school] in the main office” by either the child’s parents or a person authorized by the child’s parents. I therefore do not agree that official immunity shields Secretary Greenway.
I also cannot go along with the majority’s holding that the appellees’ liability for negligent supervision of the Perkins’ 14-year-old child is cut off by the intervening criminal act of the third party who killed the child because that intervening criminal act was unforeseeable. In Wallace v. Boys Club of Albany &c., 211 Ga. App. 534 (439 SE2d 746), this Court rejected this defense in a case involving the alleged negligent supervision of a child who was abducted and assaulted after a child was allowed to wander alone from the safety and protection of a summer camp. This Court pertinently reasoned as follows: “In the case of negligent supervision of a child, . . . what is reasonably foreseeable is not exclusively dependent upon what is known about a specific place. The danger is not only what may happen at a specific place but what may happen to any child at any place, given that children are mobile and may, as in this case, wander away from the place where they are supposed to be if they are not adequately supervised. What is at issue in a case alleging negligent supervision of a child is whether the danger of the type of harm the child suffered was reasonably foreseeable. Accordingly, the fact that no similar act had previously occurred on or near the defendant’s premises is not dispositive of the issue of whether a jury could conclude the defendant had notice that the danger of abduction and assault existed in regard to a five or six-year-old child who wandered away from defendant’s premises without adult supervision.” Id. at 536 (2).