ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Supreme Court has issued a permanent writ of mandamus in favor of the Springfield R-XII School District, effectively dismissing a lawsuit that alleged the district's negligence created a dangerous condition leading to the sexual assault of a female student at Central High School.
The decision reversed Judge Joshua Boyd Christensen's prior ruling, which denied the district's motion to dismiss based on sovereign immunity.
The court found that the plaintiff's claims did not meet the legal criteria to bypass the district's immunity from lawsuits, according to the Feb. 20 Missouri Court of Appeals opinion.
The case centered on an incident in which the plaintiff, a female minor, alleged she was sexually assaulted by a male student in a stairwell known as a "kissing stairwell" due to its lack of surveillance cameras.
The plaintiff argued that the absence of security cameras in the stairwell created a dangerous condition that facilitated the assault.
The school district argued that it was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which shields public entities from lawsuits unless there is a specific statutory waiver.
According to the district, the exception for "dangerous conditions" did not apply because the plaintiff was injured by the criminal act of another student rather than a physical defect or deficiency in the school property itself.
The court agreed with the district's interpretation. Citing established precedent, the court emphasized that the statutory waiver of sovereign immunity applies only to physical defects or deficiencies on public property.
It rejected the plaintiff's argument that the absence of cameras constituted a dangerous condition, stating that a failure to supervise or warn does not meet the legal definition of a physical defect.
"Because the statutory waiver of sovereign immunity is premised on the existence of a physical defect, failure to perform an intangible act, whether it be failure to supervise or warn, cannot constitute a dangerous 'condition' of the 'property' for purposes of waiving sovereign immunity," the court wrote, quoting prior case law.
The plaintiff's claims also included references to the male student's prior history of sexual misconduct and the district's alleged failure to adequately monitor him.
However, the court found these arguments irrelevant to the central legal question of whether the district's property itself was in a dangerous condition.
The ruling focused on attempts to reframe a failure-to-supervise claim as a dangerous-condition claim have been consistently rejected by Missouri appellate courts. "A [party] cannot back-door an issue under the guise of [another claim]," the court noted, citing previous rulings.
As a result of the court's decision, the trial court is directed to dismiss Count I of the plaintiff's petition with prejudice, meaning the claim cannot be refiled.
The ruling effectively ends the plaintiff's premises liability claim against the Springfield R-XII School District.
"We need not entangle ourselves with Plaintiff’s voluminous arguments and subarguments as they do not address the question before this Court in the writ proceeding," the opinion states. "Plaintiff recounts at great length in her brief that Plaintiff would be able to use facts to support her claim regarding Student’s prior sexual assault history at a different school, and prior criminal history without relating how any of that information pertains to her claim of dangerous condition."
The school system did not respond to a request for comment.
Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District case number: SD38624