By Loren Galloway
A Montana District Court has dismissed a claim filed against the University of Montana (UM), in which the plaintiff argued that the university should be held responsible for the actions of one of its football student-athletes.
In 2018, Montana defensive end Lorenzo Brown punched the plaintiff, Noah Willison, during at off-campus party, breaking Willison’s jaw and knocking out one of his teeth. Brown plead guilty to misdemeanor assault and was ordered to pay Willison $28,000 in restitution, to be paid in $100 monthly installments over the next 22 years. Willison and his lawyer claim that this installment plan is insufficient, given that Willison has already incurred thousands of dollars in medical and dental bills treating the injuries Brown caused.[1]
The suit alleged negligence on the part of UM and its athletics program, and the main issue was whether the university had a duty to protect Willison from harm caused by its student-athletes. The plaintiff argued that scholarship football players are effectively custodial wards of the university due to the strict schedules and rules imposed on student-athletes. Further, the plaintiff argued that due to past incidences of violent acts committed by football players and the firing of former head football coach Robin Pflugrad and former athletic director Jim O’Day over allegations of sexual assaults committed by student-athletes,[2] the university should have foreseen that its football players would commit future violent crimes and therefore should be held to have a duty to prevent such behavior by student-athletes.[3]
On December 30, 2019, the court granted an unopposed motion to dismiss Grizzlies Head Football Coach Bobby Hauck and UM Athletic Director Kent Haslam, who were also named defendants, from the case.
That left UM as a defendant, which filed a motion to dismiss, leading to the instant opinion.
UM argued in that motion that the “expectations of student-athletes within the academic and athletic arenas” do not constitute custody of those student-athletes[4] and that public policy does not favor holding schools liable for the actions of students “on the weekend, off-campus, in a non-school related function.”[5] The court agreed, concluding that there was no custodial relationship between UM and Brown, and therefore no legal duty owed by UM to Willison, and that “[a]s a matter of public policy, [the university] cannot regulate all aspects of student-athletes’ personal lives.”[6]
It’s more or less clear that Willison sued UM in hopes of being able to pay his bills sooner than he would be able to with Brown’s monthly installments alone, but the question of public policy considerations, raised by both sides in the suit, is an interesting one in the context of college athletics. Although the court’s order does not make them explicit, the implications of the kind of ruling Willison was seeking seem clear: Were colleges and universities deemed to have a duty to protect others from the actions of their student-athletes, institutions could end up on the hook for large sums of money in damages. On the one hand, this would mean the incentives to ensure that student-athletes did not commit violent acts would become stronger. Bad press resulting from allegations against a student-athlete can certainly harm an athletics department’s bottom line, but the threat of legal liability could motivate schools to take even more robust measures to deter bad acts on the parts of their student-athletes, which could produce positive results for all parties — fewer student-athletes getting in trouble, fewer headaches for schools and their administrators, and fewer people with broken jaws.
On the other hand, such a policy would likely have negative ramifications as well. For one, the limiting principle of such a policy might be hard to articulate. If a university has a custodial relationship to student-athletes due to the time demands and academic standards it imposes, such a relationship could extend to students in rigorous, highly-regimented academic programs, expanding potential institutional liability far beyond its athletics programs. The source of college and university funding also poses issues when considering how to apply such a rule. If public schools were to pay damages for torts committed by their student-athletes, taxpayers would effectively be held liable. Depending on the application of sovereign immunity in a given jurisdiction, a plaintiff’s ability to obtain damages might depend on whether the student-athlete played for a state school or a private institution.
Of course, many legal topics pose similar issues of where to draw the line and how to apply rules equitably. But the invocation of “public policy” inevitably raises the question of what we aim to achieve through our public policies. Presumably, we’d all like to have fewer people like Noah Willison getting punched in the face, and although student-athletes are a drop in the bucket when it comes to perpetrators of assault, universities and their athletics departments can play a role in reducing violence by deterring their student-athletes from doing things that harm other people. Pros and cons considered, imposing a legal duty is perhaps not the best way to ensure that schools prioritize that role, but Willison’s lawsuit illustrates why we should consider seriously both the actions athletics programs can take to prevent student-athletes from committing acts of violence and the policies we can implement to encourage colleges and universities to take those actions.
Loren is Assistant Coordinator, Athletics Risk Management & Compliance Services at the University of Texas.
[1] https://missoulian.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/judge-university-of-montana-hauck-haslam-not-liable-in-griz/article_8c6d57b5-3b67-59af-9f3e-71f51c04771c.html
[2] https://missoulian.com/news/local/university-of-montana-fires-football-coach-athletic-director/article_b7877268-79c0-11e1-92b3-0019bb2963f4.html
[3] Opinion and Order Granting University of Montana’s Motion to Dismiss, 3
[4] Opinion, 4
[5] Opinion, 3
[6] Opinion, 5
