The Missouri Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling in a case in which a student was hit while crossing a St. Louis street by a driver passing the stopped school bus.
In a February 28 ruling, the court remanded the case back to St. Louis Circuit Court. The student, identified only as D.J., through his mother R.J., had filed a complaint against First Student Inc.
A St. Louis Circuit Court jury had ruled First Student was at fault and awarded D.J. a $1.3 million verdict. The state Supreme Court disagreed and vacated the ruling, saying the driver who had hit the boy was the one responsible for his injuries.
“Because the criminal act of a third party was an intervening and superseding event, D.J. failed to prove any action First Student took or failed to take was the proximate cause of D.J.'s injuries,” the Supreme Court ruled. “The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded.”
In 2019, D.J. was a fourth-grade student who attended KIPP Victory Academy in St. Louis. KIPP had contracted with First Student Inc. to transport children to and from school.
First Student planned bus routes, stops and schedules. It provided each driver with an updated route sheet and student list. At the beginning of the 2019-20 school year, First Student told drivers to drop D.J. off at the northwest corner of the intersection of Goodfellow and Lalite.
On the afternoon of October 23, 2019, substitute driver Tomika Richardson dropped D.J. off at the southeast corner of that intersection. She did so the next day as well. But as D.J. crossed the street, a vehicle stopped directly behind the bus moved around the left side of the bus. Richardson laid on her horn and yelled at the driver, but the driver struck D.J. before running through a stop sign and speeding away.
D.J.’s left ankle was fractured, and his right ankle was sprained. The hit-and-run driver never was identified.
D.J. and his mother sued First Student and Richardson, saying Richardson negligently dropped D.J. off at an unreasonably safe location and saying First Student negligently failed to provide Richardson with a route sheet.
At the jury trial, First Student moved for a directed verdict at the close of D.J.’s evidence, but the judge overruled. First Student renewed its motion at the close of evidence, but the circuit court again overruled the motion.
The jury returned a verdict in favor of bus driver Richardson on Count I but in favor of D.J. against First Student on Count II and assessed D.J.'s damages at $1.3 million. The circuit court also overruled First Student's motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and new trial and entered judgment on the jury's verdict.
First Student appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming the circuit court erred in overruling its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict because First Student satisfied any duty it owed by dropping off D.J. in a reasonably safe location, and the criminal acts of the hit-and-run driver were an intervening and superseding cause that became the new proximate cause of D.J.'s injuries.
The Supreme Court says D.J. failed to prove the element of proximate cause regarding First Student “because the criminal acts of the hit-and-run driver were an intervening and superseding cause.”
Passing a stopped school bus is illegal, and any person who violates the law resulting in the injury of a child is guilty of a class E felony.
“To be clear, the driver's actions after striking D.J. — which could be charged as leaving the scene of an accident and a stop sign violation — are not relevant to this analysis,” the Supreme Court ruling states. “A person's actions after injuring a plaintiff cannot be a proximate cause of that person's injuries.
“In addition to committing a criminal act, the hit-and-run driver also crossed a double yellow line before striking D.J. This accident also occurred before a stop sign in a residential neighborhood.
“The sudden, unexpected decision of the hit-and-run driver to violate state law by maneuvering past a stopped school bus with its arm out and lights flashing to strike a child crossing the street is the type of ‘surprising, unexpected, or freakish,’ third party action exceeding ‘the natural and probable consequences of [the] defendant's actions.’”
The Supreme Court says policy reinforces the conclusion that the criminal act of the hit-and-run driver was a superseding cause of D.J.’s injuries, adding that First Student and Richardson followed all of their statutory obligations in this case.
“All of these provisions exist to drastically reduce the likelihood that a driver will attempt to pass a school bus and strike a child,” the ruling states. “The criminal act of a third party was the proximate cause of D.J.'s injuries.
“Because D.J. failed to make a submissible case for the element of proximate cause, the circuit court erred in overruling First Student's motion for JNOV (judgment notwithstanding the verdict). The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the circuit court to enter judgment not withstanding the verdict in First Student's favor.”
Justice Zel M. Fischer authored the majority opinion, which also was signed by Chief Judge Mary R. Russell and Judges Robin Ransom, Kelly C. Broniec and Ginger K. Gooch concurring.
In his dissent, Judge Paul C. Wilson says First Student knew a child stepping out from in front of a bus is at risk of being struck. Judge Powell also signed the dissent.
“The fact that D.J. was struck by a northbound vehicle passing the bus on the left was not a ‘surprising, unexpected, or freakish’ result,” Wilson wrote. “The risk of that occurring was precisely why D.J. was to be dropped off on the northwest corner and not the southeast corner, i.e., to keep him out of the school bus’s blind spots, to keep him from needing to cross Goodfellow, and to allow him to cross Lalite without being exposed to the risk of a driver passing on the left side of the bus.”