Court Opinion

ID: 9788702
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:16:03.118137+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:16.087883
License: Public Domain

WERDEGAR, J., Concurring.
Instructors and coaches of active sports must, as an essential part of their jobs, encourage and direct students to learn new and more difficult maneuvers and to perform already learned skills in more stringent competitive circumstances, a learning process that carries inherent risks of physical injury. In learning active sports and in athletic competition the risk of injury is ever present; instructors must frequently exercise their individual, subjective judgment in deciding'whether a student is ready to attempt a more dangerous skill or to face tougher competition; and when an injury occurs, especially an injury to a young person, the jury may be tempted to “second-guess [the] instructor’s assessment” (Kane v. National Ski Patrol System, Inc. (2001) 88 Cal.App.4th 204, 214 [105 Cal.Rptr.2d 600]). For these reasons, I agree with the majority that application of ordinary negligence standards to sports instruction threatens to severely chill both institutions’ maintenance of, and individual teachers’ participation in, such instructional programs.
I therefore agree with the majority that an instructor should be liable for a student’s injury in the course of learning a sport only if the instructor’s conduct is found to have been “ ‘totally outside the range of the ordinary activity’ [Knight v. Jewett (1992) 3 Cal.4th 296, 320 [11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696] (Knight)] involved in teaching or coaching the sport.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 996.) Although the majority also adopts Knight’s label of such conduct as “reckless” (ibid.), I do not understand our standard, at least in the instructional context, to be equivalent to recklessness as it is sometimes *1019understood, i.e., as the “wilful or wanton misconduct” shown when an actor has “ ‘intentionally done an act of an unreasonable character in disregard of a risk known to him or so obvious that he must be taken to have been aware of it, and so great as to make it highly probable that harm would follow.’ (Prosser, Law of Torts (4th ed. 1971) § 34, p. 185.)” (Morgan v. Southern Pacific Trans. Co. (1974) 37 Cal.App.3d 1006, 1011 [112 Cal.Rptr. 695]; see also Delaney v. Baker (1999) 20 Cal.4th 23, 31 [82 Cal.Rptr.2d 610, 971 P.2d 986] [recklessness “has been described as a ‘deliberate disregard’ of the ‘high degree of probability’ that an injury will occur”].) Rather, I believe a coach or instructor departs from the range of ordinary instructional activities, increasing the risks of injury beyond those inherent in teaching a sport, and is therefore subject to liability, when his or her conduct constitutes a gross or extreme departure from the instructional norms. In this, I agree with counsel for amicus curiae California Ski Industry Association, who, at oral argument, suggested the proper standard would look to an “extreme departure from standards of ordinary care.”
We started our duty analysis in Knight from the indubitably true proposition that “defendants generally have no legal duty to eliminate . . . risks inherent in the sport” but “do have a duty to use due care not to increase the risks . . . over and above those inherent in the sport.” (Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 315-316.) We then reasoned that in active sports “a participant’s normal energetic conduct often includes accidentally careless behavior” (id. at p. 318), which is for that reason “treated as an ‘inherent risk’ of a sport” (id. at p. 316), and that to allow liability to be imposed for such coparticipant negligence would alter the nature of the sport and thus chill “vigorous participation in such sporting events” (id. at p. 318). Knight’s conclusion as to the particular duty applicable was limited to coparticipants; we noted expressly that the duty of care may vary with “the role of the defendant whose conduct is at issue.” (Ibid.)
Using analogous reasoning here, I believe we must recognize a somewhat greater duty on the part of instructors, especially teachers and coaches of minor students, than the duty participants in a sport owe one another. A school football coach, while far from being the insurer of students’ safety, is also very differently situated in knowledge, training, experience, and responsibilities from the casual football player whose duty we considered in Knight. It might be said that a participant’s extreme departure from the degree of care shown by an ordinarily prudent person is an inherent risk of certain vigorous competitive sports, for in the heat of a game or the excitement of a race a contestant may lose sight of virtually everything except his or her goal. But a coach or instructor stands somewhat apart from the fray; the coach’s role includes observing and directing the competition, and he or she is expected to keep a cooler head than the competitors themselves. When the instructor or coach is a schoolteacher, moreover, the safety of the minor students will *1020usually be a primary consideration.1 Society expects—legitimately, in my view—more from instructors and coaches than merely that they will refrain from harming a student intentionally or with wanton disregard for safety. An instructor’s gross or extreme lack of care for student safety is not an inherent risk of school athletics programs.
Finally, I believe a standard akin to gross negligence will provide sufficient protection against unfair second-guessing of the instructor’s judgment and, therefore, will not unduly chill participation in sports instruction. The Legislature has, in a wide variety of contexts, considered a rule of qualified immunity, under which liability may be imposed only for gross negligence, sufficient to protect participants in, and sponsors of, socially useful enterprises against unfair liability. Such qualified immunity applies, for example, to liability of a public entity or employee for hazardous recreational activity on public property;2 to physicians, nurses and others giving medical care at the scene of an emergency;3 to volunteers and aid donors in enterprises of public benefit;4 and to various other projects, public and private, deemed important to Californians’ health and safety.5 These statutes reflect the sound legislative judgment that, under a gross negligence standard, meritless suits will typically be disposed of by summary judgment; that when a case goes to trial the jury, instructed on this standard, will be less likely to confuse injury with fault; and that verdicts reflecting such confusion will be more readily reversed, whether by the trial or appellate court,. than under an ordinary negligence standard. The same is true of suits arising from school sports injuries. We have no reason to believe athletic instructors and coaches, or the institutions that employ them, will, by and large, be deterred from offering *1021sports instruction with the protection of a gross negligence qualified immunity. School sports are certainly valuable, but I submit they are not more important than, for example, emergency cardiac care, volunteer service with nonprofits, donation to low-income food services, or administration of vaccines against childhood diseases, and school sports require no greater immunity than the law grants such highly useful activities.
Like the majority, I conclude the record here presents a triable issue of fact as to whether the individual defendant’s conduct “was totally outside the range of ordinary activity involved in teaching or coaching the sport of competitive swimming.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 1018.) Plaintiff’s evidence, if believed, tends to show she received virtually no instruction on the shallow-water racing dive, a maneuver carrying a relatively high risk of serious injury, despite the existence of an authoritative protocol, regarded as essential to student safety, for teaching this skill. Directing a student to perform such a skill in competition under these circumstances would be an extreme departure from the norms of swim instruction, and thus completely outside the ordinary range of teaching the sport.
For the above reasons, I concur in the judgment.

 Public schoolteachers, in particular, owe students a duty of care arising in part from their statutory duty of supervision. (Ed. Code, § 44807; Dailey v. Los Angeles Unified School Dist. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 741, 747 [87 Cal.Rptr. 376, 470 P.2d 360].)

 Government Code section 831.7, subdivision (c)(5).

 E.g., Education Code section 76407, subdivision (b) (physician offering voluntary medical assistance to participant at community college athletic event); Civil Code sections 1714.2, subdivision (b) (person rendering cardiopulmonary resuscitation at scene of emergency), 1714.21, subdivision (f) (volunteer rendering emergency care with automated external defibrillator); Health and Safety Code section 1799.106 (emergency medical technician, firefighter or law enforcement officer rendering emergency medical services at scene of emergency); Business and Professions Code sections 2727.5 (registered nurse rendering care, outside course of employment, at scene of emergency), 3706 (same as to respiratory therapist), 4826.1 (veterinarian rendering emergency treatment to animal at scene of accident).

 E.g., Corporations Code section 5239, subdivision (a)(3) (volunteer director or officer of nonprofit public benefit corporation); Welfare and Institutions Code section 9543, subdivision (e) (donor of food to “Brown Bag” program for low-income seniors).

 E.g., Health and Safety Code sections 1596.643, subdivision (b) (employees of state agency operating child care services hotline), 25400, subdivision (b) (public entity or employee abating hazardous substance spill or discharge), 120455 (person administering vaccine to minor).