Court Opinion

ID: 9574669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:06:57.710775+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:48.347577
License: Public Domain

HOWELL, Chief Judge,
concurring in result:
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment to the School District. I write separately, however, because I reach that conclusion through a different analysis than that of the majority.
In my view, the majority places undue emphasis on the affidavit of Harland Brown, the campus security monitor. In his affidavit, Brown points to what he believes to be numerous deficiencies in the District’s approach to maintaining security on campus, including the District’s failure to supply him with a uniform, gun, or night stick, and the District’s failure to properly train him. Accepting these allegations to be true, as we must when determining whether summary judgment was *468properly granted, I do not believe Brown’s affidavit creates any genuine issues of fact as to the District’s liability under the Tort Claims Act.
As the majority correctly notes, the District may be held liable only if it exercised its duty to supervise its students in a grossly negligent manner. “Gross negligence is the intentional, conscious failure to do something which it is incumbent upon one to do or the doing of a thing intentionally that one ought not to do. Negligence is the failure to exercise due care, while gross negligence is the failure to exercise slight care.” Clyburn v. Sumter County Sch. Dist. No. 17, 317 S.C. 50, 53, 451 S.E.2d 885, 887 (1994) (citation omitted).
It is undisputed that the District took some steps to ensure the safety of its students, including employing three assistant principals and two security monitors, all of whom carried walkie-talkies and monitored the hallways to prevent disturbances. Thus, I believe that the District exercised at least slight care with regard to campus security in general. While it may be that the District’s security measures could have been more extensive, the fact that the District did not do everything possible does not amount to gross negligence. See e.g., Clyburn, 317 S.C. at 53, 451 S.E.2d at 887 (school not grossly negligent where its employees attempted on several occasions to prevent confrontations between student and non-student assailant, even though school’s efforts ultimately were inadequate). The security measures actually in place cannot be considered so deficient as to amount to a failure on the part of the District to exercise slight care. Thus, to the extent Etheredge’s claim is premised upon the District’s failure to provide adequate security at the school, I conclude that the only reasonable inference from the facts is that the District was not grossly negligent.
Moreover, even if the District’s security policies were deficient in the areas identified in Brown’s affidavit, neither Brown’s affidavit nor any other evidence presented by Ether-edge in any way links these deficiencies to the tragic incident between Dunlap and his assailants. That is, there is no evidence in the record from which a jury could reasonably conclude that the incident would not have occurred had Brown been trained and outfitted as he desired or had the school’s *469security measures otherwise been tightened. See, e.g., Rush v. Blanchard, 310 S.C. 375, 379, 426 S.E.2d 802, 804 (1993) (Proof of proximate cause “requires proof of both causation in fact and legal cause. Causation in fact is proved by establishing the injury would not have occurred ‘but for’ the defendant’s negligence.”) (citation omitted). Thus, even assuming the District’s failure to properly establish and implement security measures could be considered gross negligence, there is no evidence in the record from which we could conclude that the gross negligence was the proximate cause of Dunlap’s death. See, e.g., Ellis v. Oliver, 323 S.C. 121, 125, 473 S.E.2d 793, 795 (1996) (“Negligence is not actionable unless it is a proximate cause of the injury complained of.”).
Although I believe Brown’s affidavit fails to create any genuine issue of material fact, I nonetheless conclude that there are genuine issues of fact that render summary judgment inappropriate.
In support of its motion for summary judgment, the District presented the affidavit of Ellen Mosely, the Eau Claire principal at the time of the shooting. According to Mosely’s affidavit, on January 20, 1993, just over a year before the shooting, Dunlap, the victim of the incident involved in this case, was found with a pistol in his possession on campus. Dunlap was expelled for the remainder of that school year. In its answer, the District admitted that, prior to the fatal shooting, the actions of Dunlap “toward the pupil who shot him created a belief by that pupil that such pupil was in imminent danger of losing his life or sustaining serious bodily injury.”
These facts, when viewed in the light most favorable to Etheredge, indicate that the District had notice before the shooting of specific and potentially life-threatening problems between Dunlap and the student who killed him. Given this notice and Dunlap’s history of bringing a dangerous weapon to school, a jury could reasonably conclude that the District’s failure to intervene and attempt to resolve the problems between Dunlap and his assailant amounted to gross negligence.1 Cf. Smart v. Hampton County Sch. Dist. No. 2, 315 *470S.C. 192, 432 S.E.2d 487 (Ct.App.1993) (where teacher knew that student was being bullied by other students between whom the student was seated, teacher’s failure to change the seating arrangement to separate the boys could reasonably be considered a failure to exercise slight care), cert. denied (December 7, 1993).
Accordingly, based on the particular facts of this case, I agree with the majority’s conclusion that summary judgment should not have been granted in this case. I disagree, however, with majority’s basis for its conclusion.

. Rule 56, SCRCP does not require that the genuine issues of fact necessary to avoid summary judgment be created by the submissions of the non-moving party. Instead, Rule 56 simply provides that “[t]he *470judgment sought shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Rule 56(c), SCRCP. Thus, it is irrelevant that it was the materials submitted by the District that created the issues of fact rendering summary judgment inappropriate.