Negligent Supervision Part 2

Last week I blogged about the high standard a litigant must meet in order to successfully bring a negligent supervision suit against a school. As luck would have it, the NY Law Journal just published an example of a case that did meet that high standard.


In Thacker v. City of New York, plaintiff brought suit after she was assaulted by another student. While going down a hallway during an extracurricular activity, another student pushed the plaintiff, causing her to fall. As a result of the shove, the plaintiff suffered injuries to her knee. A student pushing another is a classic example of a an impulsive, unanticipated act for which a school is not held responsible.


An examination of Thacker's facts reveals why it was allowed to go to trial. The assaulting student had a history of disciplinary problems. At the time of the assault, the offending student was suspended from school but allowed to attend the extracurricular activity.

Not only did the offending student have a history of problems in general, but he had a history of run ins with the plaintiff. The offending student was once disciplined for calling the plaintiff a "bitch." The offending student also threatened plaintiff with a bottle and threw a chair across the room when reprimanded by a teacher.


The Court found that the school’s personnel should have monitored the offending student closely in light of his past behavior. The school personnel should have been extra vigilant considering that the plaintiff was in close proximity to the offending student.

The Court also found that the offending student’s behavior should have been anticipated because the school personnel created a situation where such a shove was foreseeable. During the extracurricular activity, a teacher announced that there was pizza in another room. Due to the limited quantity, the pizza was first come first serve. This "first come first serve" situation created a climate where students would run, jostle, compete, and push to get pizza. It would be foreseeable that the offending student would get carried away and get physical with others. It is further foreseeable that the offending student would get physical with someone he has had problems with in the past, such as plaintiff.


All these factors led the Court to conclude that the push given to plaintiff was not an unanticipated, impulsive, spontaneous act. As such, plaintiff was allowed to bring her case before a jury. I bring up this case to show that while negligent supervision cases are difficult, they are not impossible to bring, given the appropriate circumstances.

-Matthew Lombard, Associate Attorney