Emanuel v. Great Falls School District – 2009 MT 185

In January 2002, Daniel Robbins (Robbins) turned in a school assignment containing his New Year’s Resolution List.  The list contained several violent items, including “[g]et a drivers license so I can do those horrible things people like to read about in the paper,” and “kill the tooth fairy.”  There were no allegations that the list contained no specific threats against non-fictional persons.  This resulted in a meeting with Robbins’, his mother, and the school counselor.  Because nothing was resolved at this first meeting, a subsequent meeting with held with Robbins’, his mother, the school principal and the associate principal.  The conclusion of this meeting was that although the list was inappropriate and should be taken seriously, this was a teenage attempt at black humor.

Approximately 17 months later, Robbins purposely ran over Patricia Emanuel as she was jogging past Robbins’ high school.  The passenger in Robbins’ vehicle told police that Robbins stated that he planned to run her over and engage in necrophilia with her corpse.

Emanuel filed suit against GFSD (Robbins’ school), alleging that the school was negligent in handling Robbins and the resolution list.  The District Court granted summary judgement for GFSD, finding that there was no special relationship between GFSD and Emanuel, therefore GFSD was under no duty to protect Emanuel from Robbins.

SCOMONT avoided the issue of whether a special relationship is required in order to give rise to the duty of ordinary care to protect others against harm from third persons by finding that Emanuel was not a foreseeable plaintiff.  “If a reasonably prudent defendant can foresee neither any danger of direct injury nor any risk from an intervening cause he is simply not negligent.”  Prindel v. Ravalli County, 2006 MT 62, ¶ 39.  SCOMONT concluded that GFSD need not have “foreseen that Robbins would deliberately run over a pedestrian, after school hours, off school grounds, nearly seventeen months after the disturbing New Year’s Resolution list was brought to its attention.”  Emanuel, ¶ 15.  “Therefore, the District Court did not err in concluding that, as a matter of law, GFSD owed no duty to Emanuel.”  Emanuel, ¶ 16.