Liability Issues Related to Transportation of Student-athletes
By Lee Green
The Issue
In an era when shrinking school budgets must be reconciled against rapidly climbing costs for the purchase of school vehicles, dramatic increases in contract rates for the use of common carriers and soaring fuel costs, one of the greatest challenges facing school athletics programs is how to fulfill the legal duty to provide safe transportation for student-athletes.
The duty to provide safe transportation arises from the "in loco parentis" role imposed by courts on schools - the legal precept that in certain contexts, schools stand in the place of parents and must exercise a standard of care to protect young persons equivalent to that which would be exercised by their parents. With regard to student-athletes, courts have generally required that schools provide safe round-trip transport from the school to all off-campus practices, competitions and other sports-related activities.
Although courts nationwide have consistently ruled that schools have an affirmative duty to provide round-trip transport to sports events for student-athletes and to exercise reasonable care in that transport, precise standards regarding the legal definition of "reasonable care in transport" have not emerged from the case law. The standard of care imposed in a particular situation depends on the mode of transport being employed, the identity and characteristics of the driver, the age and other characteristics of the passengers, and any other relevant circumstances.
What has emerged from the case law is not a clear-cut set of legally acceptable modes for transporting student-athletes, but rather a general hierarchy of judicially preferred methods ranging from those that courts tend to look upon with favor to those marginally acceptable to courts to those that courts tend to look upon with extreme disfavor. Before examining that hierarchy, it is instructive to consider the facts and outcome in a judicial decision that is typical of the safe transportation court cases.
Case Law
In Clement v. Griffin, a 1994 decision of the Court of Appeals of Louisiana dealing with the liability of a school to student-athletes injured in an automobile accident, liability rulings were issued with regard to the type of vehicle being used, the maintenance of the vehicle, the characteristics of the driver, the training of the driver, and the operation of the vehicle by the driver at the time of the accident.
The accident occurred as a 15-passenger van carrying the Delgado Community College baseball team was traveling along an interstate highway en route to an away game. The van was carrying 13 passengers and was being driven by a student coach who did not hold the legally required chauffeur's license. When a tire blew out, the van careened into the highway's grassy median and rolled over three times. Several of the passengers were ejected from the vehicle and all suffered serious injuries. The ensuing negligence suit named as defendants the driver Griffin, the school and the State of Louisiana.
In its decision, the Court of Appeals ruled that schools have several duties with regard to providing safe transportation for student-athletes: (1) to choose a proper vehicle, (2) to properly maintain the vehicle, (3) to select a qualified driver, (4) to properly train the driver and (5) to ensure that the driver properly operates the vehicle during transport.
Although Clement v. Griffin was decided several years before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued rollover warnings for users of 15-passenger vans and more than a decade before the enactment in 2005 by Congress of new safety standards for such vans and limitations on their use by schools, the Louisiana Court of Appeals nevertheless acknowledged the already existing reputation of 15-passenger vans for above-average risk of rollover accidents. Much of the court's opinion focused on the role of proper tire pressure in preventing 15-passenger van blowouts and rollovers and the court concluded that the evidence overwhelmingly indicated that the tires had been dramatically underinflated (45 p.s.i. instead of the recommended 75 p.s.i.), thereby significantly contributing to the accident.
The Court of Appeals also concluded that negligence had occurred in the selection of an inexperienced driver who lacked the proper license and who had received no training in how to operate a van or how to handle a van during an emergency such as a blowout. In addition, based on the testimony of several passengers, the court found that the driver had been operating the vehicle in a reckless manner before and during the accident, including driving at speeds approximately 15 miles per hour above the speed limit and, when the blowout occurred, jamming on the brakes and yanking the steering wheel in the wrong direction, which resulted in the loss of rear-end stability that caused the rollover.
Hierarchy of Transportation Modes
Independent Contract Carriers: Courts tend to find that where schools employ outside common carriers to transport student-athletes, transference of risk has occurred and the school will be held liable for an accident only where the independent carrier was using visibly dangerous vehicles or its drivers were acting in a visibly dangerous manner.
Properly Maintained School Vehicles Driven By Properly Licensed Personnel: Courts tend to look with favor upon this option and will generally find that schools have satisfied their duty of reasonable care when this mode of transport is employed. An exception would be where the school uses 15-passenger vans in violation of Public Law 109-59 enacted by Congress in 2005. The statute prohibits schools from using such vans in the transport of K-12 students unless the vans comply with standards prescribed for school buses. Information on the exact requirements of the law may be found on the NHTSA Web site (www.nhtsa.dot.gov).
Another exception would be where factors are present that indicate it might be unsafe for even a properly licensed driver to operate the vehicle. For example, sometimes a coach will work a long day teaching at the school, then drive a team to a competition, coach that competition, and then drive the team back to the school late at night, resulting in a total number of hours worked that day far in excess of the maximum that would be legally permitted for an over-the-road truck driver.
A final exception would be the use of student drivers. Even where student drivers are properly licensed (unlikely in most jurisdictions because of minimum age requirements for a chauffeur's license), courts look with extreme disfavor on the use of student drivers to transport teams.
Vehicles Owned and Driven By Athletics Personnel: Courts tend to look with disfavor upon the use of vehicles owned by athletics personnel to transport student-athletes and will generally rule that it is a lack of reasonable care by schools to employ this method because of the difficulty in monitoring the type of vehicle being used and its condition. If this mode is the only possible means of transport for certain teams at a school, it is incumbent upon school administrators to develop procedures for inspecting such vehicles and ensuring that the drivers are properly licensed for the number of passengers to be transported. The school should also investigate the purchase of a rider to the insurance policy on the vehicle - basic policies typically do not cover injuries to passengers such as student-athletes being transported on behalf of a school.
Vehicles Owned By and Driven By Student-Athletes or Their Parents: Courts tend to look with extreme disfavor upon this mode of transport and generally will assign liability to the school and its athletics personnel for allowing such transport to or from school sports events. It is impossible in this limited space to provide a full exploration of the many combinations and permutations related to this method of transport - in sum, the recommended course of action by which schools may fulfill their in loco parentis role is to provide round-trip transportation to all athletics practices, competitions and other activities and insist that all student-athletes use only the school-provided method of transport.
Non-Vehicular Methods of Transportation - Walking, Running and Mass Transit: Locations of practice fields or sports venues sometimes require student-athletes to walk a few blocks, in the course of which they may have to cross busy streets. Or coaches may incorporate training runs for student-athletes as the means of transport to practice facilities. And in urban areas where practice fields or sports venues may be located far off-campus from land-locked schools, mass transit such as subways or city buses may be used as the means of transport.
In each of these scenarios, courts tend to evaluate two issues. The first is whether reasonable care was taken by athletics personnel to establish the safest possible route to the sports venue. The second is whether reasonable supervision is provided by athletics personnel en route to ensure the safety of the student-athletes.
Lee Green is an attorney and a professor at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, where he teaches courses in sports law, business law and constitutional law. He may be contacted at Lee.Green@BakerU.Edu.
