A Louisiana state appeals court has affirmed the ruling of a trial court that a school board and two of its football coaches failed to provide proper supervision and actually enhanced the risk of injury when they moved a football practice indoors after it started raining.
Central to the appeals court’s ruling was its conclusion that “because the (lower court’s) findings of fact are based on a reasonable view of the evidence, they are not manifestly erroneous, and we may not set them aside.”
Armand Stirgus was a student at East St. John High School, where he played on its football team. On January 22, 2007, during an outdoor practice session, it began raining heavily, so coaches Larry Dauterive and Ronald Barrilloux decided to move the practice inside the gym.
While outside, the players wore shorts and shirts and had their cleats on. They were instructed to go back to the locker room and change into dry clothes and tennis shoes for indoor practice. Although there was conflicting evidence as to whether all of the players changed, it was not disputed that even those players who put on dry clothes had to cross an uncovered expanse of about 25 yards in the continuing rain to get from the locker room to the gym.
Once in the gym, about 20 of the players, including Stirgus, began running full speed passing patterns, which generally involved the receiver going a few steps forward and then making a cut to the side where the quarterback would deliver the ball. While running a pass route, Stirgus jumped for the ball and lost his balance, injuring his hip on impact with the floor. He sat out the remainder of the Monday practice and went home on the school bus. Later that evening his mother took him to an emergency room, where he was diagnosed as having a muscle spasm in his hip. He continued to have pains over the next few days, and a second examination on Friday showed a fractured hip.
Stirgus’s mom, Alana, sued the school and the coaches, alleging that they had failed to provide proper supervision and had allowed an unreasonable risk of injury to develop during the indoor practice. The court ruled for Stirgus, leading to the appeal.
In considering the issue of liability, the court relied on Robinson v. Jefferson Parish School Bd., 08-1224 (La. App. 5 Cir. 4/7/09), 9 So.3d 1035, 1046-47, in which a court summarized the law relating to the liability of schools for injury to their students as follows:
“A school board, through its agents and teachers, owes a duty of reasonable supervision over students. The supervision required is reasonable, competent supervision appropriate to the age of the children and the attendant circumstances. This duty does not make the school board the insurer of the safety of the children. Constant supervision of all students is not possible, nor required for educators to discharge their duty to provide adequate supervision. Before liability can be imposed upon a school board for failure to adequately supervise the safety of students, there must be proof of negligence in providing supervision and also proof of a causal connection between the lack of supervision and the accident.”
Further, to “establish a claim against a school board for failure to adequately supervise the safety of its students, a plaintiff must prove: (1) negligence on the part of the school board, its agents, or teachers in providing supervision; (2) a causal connection between the lack of supervision and the accident; and (3) that the risk of unreasonable injury was foreseeable, constructively or actually known, and preventable if a requisite degree of supervision had been exercised.
“In the present case, the ultimate issue is whether the coaches were negligent in permitting a full speed practice to be conducted in the gym in the conditions that then prevailed, and the paramount factual question in this regard is whether the floor was wet. The evidence on this point was varied. There was no dispute that the players had been caught in the rain during the outside practice and had come into the locker room to change their clothes and shoes. It was also not seriously disputed that some of the players may not have changed before coming to the gym, and further, that even if all of the players had changed they still had to traverse an open space of about 25 yards in the rain to get from the locker room to the gym. There was also general agreement that about 20 players were executing the fourth pass route when the accident occurred, which meant that between 45 and 80 individual pass routes had already been run with at most possibly one prior mishap.
“As to the condition of the floor, Stirgus testified that he did not see any water on the floor in the area where the passing drills were being run, but he did see water on other parts of the gym floor. He said that after he fell he noticed that his gym shorts were wet on the spot where they hit the floor, and he also noticed some wet streaks on the floor in the same area. He also said that another player had slipped down in that area before him. He was also sure that he had changed into dry clothes before coming into the gym. The two coaches both testified that they did not recall water being on the floor where the drills were being run, and both said that Stirgus was the only person to fall that day.”
The appeals court noted that “resolution of the above discrepancies involves factual determinations, and therefore the appellate standard of review of these determinations is manifest error. Stobart v. State through DOTD, 617 So. 2d 880 (La. 1993). In Stobart, the court explained that the question is not whether the reviewing court would have made different findings had it been sitting as the trier of fact. It is rather whether, viewing the record as a whole, a reasonable trier of fact could have made the findings at issue on appeal.
“In the present case, there was conflicting evidence as to whether there was water on the floor where Stirgus fell. Although the coaches and the other player did not notice any water, Stirgus said that he noticed that his shorts were wet after the fall, and he saw streaks of water on the floor at that time. There was evidence to show that some of the players did not change into dry clothes, and it was undisputed that even those that had changed had to go back out into the rain to get from the locker room to the gym.
“Considering all of this conflicting evidence, it is clear that a finding that the floor was wet was based on a reasonable view of that evidence. It is equally clear that it was reasonable on the entire record to find that the coaches did not properly supervise the practice, but rather allowed full speed drills involving quick turns and leaping for balls in a situation where it would not be unexpected to have hazardous wet floor conditions. Because the above findings of fact are based on a reasonable view of the evidence, they are not manifestly erroneous, and we may not set them aside.”
Alana Stirgus v. St. John the Baptist Parish School Board et al.; Ct. App. La., 5th Cir.; NO. 13-CA-15, 13-15 (La.App. 5 Cir. 07/30/13); 2013 La. App. LEXIS 1541; 7/10/13
Attorneys of Record: (for plaintiff) Michael T. Beckers, Attorney at Law, Baton Rouge, La. (attorneys for defendants) Kevin P. Klibert, Attorney at Law, Reserve, La.
