A recent federal appeals court ruling has released the North Pocono School District in Pennsylvania from a lawsuit filed by the parents of a disabled boy who was hurt during a 2006 bus evacuation drill. The ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supported a decision by U.S. Middle District Judge Robert D. Mariani.
Elizabeth and William Robinson sued the district for alleged inaction by school officials after their 12-year-old son (referred to as I.R. in court files) broke one of his legs during required safety training in September 2006. The Robinsons claimed the district showed such “deliberate indifference” to the safety of their son that it violated his right to be free from “abusive government action,” court documents state.
In their lawsuit, the parents claimed the boy, who was legally blind and suffered from osteopetrosis, or “brittle bone” disease, was not supervised during the evacuation drill and fell from the rear emergency exit door of the bus.
Under Pennsylvania state law, school districts must conduct a biannual emergency evacuation drill in which all students are taught how to properly exit a school bus in case of a fire or accident. During the drill, students practice exiting the bus through the rear emergency door, which involves navigating about a 4-foot droop from the bus floor to the ground.
“The District did not maintain any set policy regarding accommodations for disabled students during bus-evacuation drills, or any system for tracking which students might need special assistance during the drills,” according to court documents.
As a sixth grader, I.R. participated in the drill twice, but the parties dispute whether he received assistance from district staff on those occasions. Yet I.R. testified at a deposition that a teacher had assisted him during a drill in sixth grade — a year before the drill in question caused his injury — and the court assumed this was correct.
Circuit Court Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie agreed with Mariani in his opinion, stating that school officials had not shown “deliberate indifference” to the supposed risks to I.R.’s safety that would have violated his rights.
Peggy Burns, owner of the Education Compliance Group and longtime legal consultant, said it can be difficult to understand how technical legal principles are used to vanquish a claim by one party and spell “success” for another. In essence, the court had to decide whether district officials displayed “deliberate indifference,” she explained.
“The 3rd Circuit Court’s decision that the district did not exhibit such indifference is due in part to a conclusion that the district’s decision not to advise driver Peirce of I.R.’s special needs was at most ‘mere negligence’ — ‘a bureaucratic oversight,’” she told STN. “It also noted that the district’s choice not to provide categorical supervision for older students during evacuation drills was reasonable.”
The most important take-away for student transporters, Burns stressed, is that the district simply had no reason to believe that older students, even those with disabilities, would be exposed to “a substantial risk of serious injury” when participating in the drill under the supervision of a responsible bus driver.
“As the Court clearly indicates, a school district has a right to expect that a driver will follow directions,” she said. “Implicit in the Court’s decision, it seems, is the expectation that (1) companies will hire experienced drivers, such as Peirce, and that (2) companies will be sure that a driver’s responsibilities are clearly spelled out.
“Had the case against the driver and the company not been settled but litigated and decided by a court, we might have a better understanding of whether a court will be expected to monitor a driver’s compliance with those responsibilities,” she continued, referring to the Robinsons’ lawsuit against the bus driver and his employer, Pocono Transportation Inc.. They agreed to an undisclosed settlement with the defendants right before the case was scheduled to go to trial in 2013. Court records show I.R. died in late 2012.
“This tragic case is certainly one I would use to train drivers over and over again about their obligation to comply with non-ambiguous rules,” added Burns.
