A “growing number of school districts nationwide are adopting rigorous security policies for parents and others who want to volunteer.” The expense and inconvenience of the $100 background checks are dissuading many parents from participating. The New York Times blames this on post-9/11 terrorism concerns, but the real culprit goes unmentioned: fear of liability for failure to screen. Even though “there is no evidence that tighter screening of parent volunteers prevents problems,” the failure to screen could be used by a plaintiffs’ lawyer to hold a school district liable or the criminal behavior of a volunteer. (Tamar Lewin, “Want to Volunteer in Schools? Be Ready for a Security Check”, New York Times, Mar. 11) (via Jacobs). One such lawsuit is pending now in New Haven, alleging the city Board of Education should have taken steps to determine if a Yale professor who participated in a School Volunteers for New Haven mentoring program was a pedophile–even though the plaintiff admits a background check wouldn’t have turned up anything, he suggests that perhaps Professor Antonio Lasaga would’ve been deterred from applying for the program. Needless to say, the plaintiff also plans to sue Yale. (Michelle Tuccitto, “School board asks to get out of Lasaga sex abuse case”, New Haven Register, Mar. 10).
Meanwhile, an Orange County appeals court ruled recently in Wiener v. Southcoast Childcare Centers Inc., that a daycare center and its landlord, a church, could potentially be held liable for failing to put up a fence “to protect the children from out-of-control cars” when Steven Abrams deliberately drove his Cadillac onto a playground at 40 mph and murdered two children. The good news is that the California Supreme Court indicated skepticism of the tenability of the claim during oral argument this week. (David Kravets, “Court debates landowner liability for unforeseen crimes”, AP, Mar. 10; Mike McKee, “Calif. Justices Wary of Liability for Others’ Crimes”, The Recorder, Mar. 11). If the California Supreme Court reverses and dismisses the case, tort reform opponents will pooh-pooh concerns about the lawsuit, but meanwhile the daycare center and church will have been forced to litigate this in front of three levels of courts at great expense.
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