"Court rules girl not responsible for sex with teacher"
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 09, 2005 11:32 AM | Email ThisThe teacher made poor choices. The district was negligent in hiring this man since they were aware he had a history of making poor choices.
The girl made a poor choice. It is difficult to hold a 13 year old legally accountable for her actions, in this case. She may be a sexual predator, but no one seems to be arguing that is the case.
Why is a link to this story here without commentary? What am I missing?
Posted by: huckleberry on December 9, 2005 11:44 AMWe like our double standards when they are hot, blonde, and show up to court in a tight skirt.
Posted by: Andy on December 9, 2005 12:14 PMBut that same 13 year old girl is not old enough to decide whether she can have sex in the first place.
Posted by: Mike S. on December 9, 2005 12:41 PMJustice Madsen noted that contributory fault is not a defense against a claim of intentional misconduct. Therefore, as respects the teacher, who engaged in intentional miscondct, everyone agreed that the girl's conduct is not in any way a defense.
However, because the teacher's conduct did not occur in connection with or in furtherance of the interest of his employer, the School District, the School District is not vicariously (i.e. automatically) liable for the teacher's actions. The School District can be held liable only if its own negligent conduct contributed to the harm caused to the girl.
In this case, as soon as the School District learned that there might be some kind of a relationship between the teacher and the child, the School District attempted to conduct an investigation. They interviewed the girl. She denied having any relationship with the teacher, and did everything she could to obstruct the investigation.
The School District did not argue that the girl's conduct absolved it from liability. Instead, all it wanted was for the judge to instruct the jury that it could consider apportioning some fault to the girl, who had done everything she could to prevent the District from discovering the facts.
The majority discovered a new "public policy" (often judicial code-words for "we are making this up as we go") that prevented the jury from finding the girl was at all at fault based, not just for her decision to have sex with the teacher, but also for her decision to lie about it, and to prevent the School District from finding out about it.
The dissent (in my view correctly) pointed out that the majority's decision will likely have the effect of encouragin more such incidents in the future. If you are a 17 year old girl, and would like to make a quick million dollars, all you have to do now is seduce one of your teachers, lie to the School District about it, and then claim the School District was negligent because it did not see through your lies and stop the relationship.
Posted by: Matt from Olympia on December 9, 2005 01:41 PM
> because the teacher's conduct did not occur in connection with or in furtherance of the interest of his employer...the School District can be held liable only if its own negligent conduct contributed to the harm caused to the girl.
Where jobs require a relationship of trust between a minor and adult -- teachers, coaches, priests, etc -- there can be vicarious liability. Otherwise the Catholic Church wouldn't be liable for priest sex abuse.
I actually think the court's ruling was correct. The argument shouldn't be that she was contributorily negligent, because she has no duty to cooperate with investigations; the argument should be that the district met its duty to investigate and was stonewalled by the girl. No breach of duty, no damages.
Posted by: brett on December 9, 2005 03:25 PM