Court Opinion

ID: 9567770
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:57:35.054456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:20:36.254728
License: Public Domain

Justice MARTIN
dissenting in part.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion on the issue of respondeat superior. The question of whether the defendant, Franklin County Board of Education, is liable for the actions of its employee, Vann Bass, is properly for the jury to decide. There is a material question of fact as to whether Bass was acting within *596the scope of his employment. Therefore, summary judgment was improvidently allowed.
At the outset, it is to be noted that paragraph 38 of plaintiff’s complaint alleges that Bass was acting within the course and scope of his employment with the defendant Board of Education. The defendant Board of Education merely denies the allegations of paragraph 38.
Bass in his affidavit simply denies that he assaulted Pamela. Nowhere in the record is there any evidence that Bass was not acting in the course and scope of his employment with the Board at the time in question.
To the contrary, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-movant, plaintiff has made a forecast showing:
(1) Pamela was a nine-year-old elementary school student.
(2) She had not been attending school regularly and had a truancy problem.
(3) Bass was the principal of the school attended by Pamela and was charged by the defendant Board of Education with the duty of counselling and disciplining students because of truancy.
(4) At the time in question, Bass ordered Pamela to come into his office. Upon arriving in Bass’s office, Pamela sat in a chair on the opposite side from where Bass sat at his desk. Once inside the office, Pamela was completely within the power of Bass.
(5) During his counselling and disciplining of Pamela, Bass committed a sexual assault upon her.
In Munick v. Durham, 181 N.C. 188, 106 S.E. 665 (1921), this Court held that a city employee was acting within the scope of his employment when he committed an unprovoked assault upon a customer who was paying his water bill. Although the employee had no instructions to commit acts of violence, he was nevertheless acting as an agent for the city. “Acting within the scope of employment means while on duty.” Id. at 193, 106 S.E. at 667 (quoting Cook v. R.R., 128 N.C. 333, 38 S.E. 925 (1901)). Although the “while on duty” rule has since been abandoned, “the employer is not absolved from liability by reason of the fact that the employee was also motivated by malice or ill will toward the person injured, or even by the fact that the employer had expressly forbidden *597him to commit such act.” Wegner v. Delicatessen, 270 N.C. 62, 66, 153 S.E.2d 804, 808 (1967) (citations omitted). In Wegner the Court noted that the employee who assaulted a customer had no managerial responsibilities in his position as busboy. His job of clearing tables had nothing to do with his striking the plaintiff, although the original quarrel apparently arose while the employee was performing his duties. Had he assaulted the plaintiff while clearing the table, he would have been within the scope of his employment. Id. at 68, 153 S.E.2d at 809. Here the assault occurred while Bass was counselling and disciplining the child.
I do not agree with the majority’s conclusion that the alleged sexual assault was beyond the course and scope of Bass’s employment as a matter of law. Additional evidence gleaned from the materials before the court showed that Bass knew about Pamela’s truancy problem and in the fall of 1984 had met with her mother to discuss the matter. Taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff for summary judgment purposes, the evidence shows that Bass called the plaintiff to his office for disciplinary purposes. Discipline of students is clearly within the scope of a principal’s employment. N.C.G.S. § 115C-288(c) (1987) (“The principal shall use reasonable force to discipline students”). There is a material question of fact as to whether Bass was acting within the course and scope of his employment. That the assault was sexual in nature should not preclude the case from going before a jury. Courts in other jurisdictions have not found sexual assaults to be necessarily outside the scope of employment. See, e.g., Marston v. Minneapolis Clinic of Psychiatry, 329 N.W.2d 306 (Minn. 1983) (whether sexual assaults committed by psychologist on a patient were within the scope of employment by medical center was a question of fact).
When the principal of a school, acting in that capacity and exercising the authority of that position, orders a nine-year-old girl into the confines of his office, she is completely subject to his control. The school board cannot escape liability by arguing that the assault was beyond the scope of the employment. This Court has long recognized that where an employee has committed a wrongful act, the loss should be borne by the employer, not the innocent victim:
The principal may be perfectly innocent of any actual wrong or of any complicity therein, but this will not excuse him, for the party who was injured by the wrongful act is also *598innocent; and the doctrine is that where one of two or more innocent parties must suffer loss by the wrongful act of another, it is more reasonable and just that he should suffer it who has placed the real wrong-doer in a position which enabled him to commit the wrongful act, rather than the one who had nothing whatever to do with setting in motion the cause of such act.
Ange v. Woodmen, 173 N.C. 33, 35-36, 91 S.E. 586, 587 (1917) (quoting Reinhardt on Agency § 335). Sexual assaults are not only acts of personal gratification, but also acts of violence.
Here, the defendant Board of Education placed its employee, Bass, in the physical and authoritarian position that enabled him to commit the assault on Pamela. Under such circumstances the Board is liable for the torts of its agent. See Restatement (Second) Agency § 219(2)(d) (1957).
Moreover, the public policy of North Carolina demands that plaintiff should have at least an opportunity to present her case against the Board of Education to the jury. Our state has a compelling interest in protecting its school children from sexual assaults. This requires that such children have a meaningful remedy.
At the very least it is unclear what happened in Bass’s office; he denies any assault occurred. Plaintiff’s forecast of the evidence shows that she was ordered into Bass’s office for counselling and discipline because of her truancy, and that she was sexually assaulted arising out of this encounter. This Court adopted the reasoning of our Court of Appeals in Edwards v. Akion, 52 N.C. App. 688, 279 S.E.2d 894, aff’d, 304 N.C. 585, 284 S.E.2d 518 (1981), which held:
When there is a dispute as to what the employee was actually doing at the time the tort was committed, all doubt must be resolved in favor of liability and the facts must be determined by the jury. The doctrine should be applied liberally, especially where the business involves a duty to the public, and the courts should be slow to assume a deviation from the duties of employment.
Id. at 698, 279 S.E.2d at 900 (citations omitted). Akion involved an assault by a sanitation worker arising out of a dispute as to the collection of garbage.
*599With the increased prevalence of sexual assaults on children in our society, the courts should be the last to deny relief to the innocent.
Justice FRYE joins in this dissenting opinion.