Grooms v. Marlboro County School Dist., 1765
| Decision Date | 14 January 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. 1765,1765 |
| Court | South Carolina Court of Appeals |
| Parties | , 73 Ed. Law Rep. 554 John Thomas GROOMS, Appellant, v. MARLBORO COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT, Respondent. . Heard |
John W. Bledsoe, III, Hartsville, and Eugene Huggins, Bennettsville, for appellant.
William P. Griggs, Cheraw, for respondent.
This action involves the South Carolina Tort Claims Act, S.C.Code Ann. §§ 15-78-10 et seq. (Supp.1991). John Thomas Grooms (Tommy), sued the Marlboro County School District under the act for injuries he received while attending a school operated by the school district. The trial court granted the school district's motion for summary judgment on the grounds that Tommy presented no evidence that the school district exercised in a grossly negligent manner its duty to supervise students in its school, including Tommy, and that the loss suffered by Tommy resulted from an exercise of discretion by the school district. Tommy appeals. We reverse and remand.
Summary judgment should not be granted except where it is perfectly clear that no genuine issue of material fact exists and an inquiry into the facts is not desirable to clarify application of the law. Bates v. City of Columbia, 301 S.C. 320, 391 S.E.2d 733 (Ct.App.1990). In determining whether to grant summary judgment, the pleadings and documents on file must be liberally construed in the nonmoving party's favor and the nonmoving party must be accorded the benefit of all favorable inferences that might reasonably be drawn from the record. Id.
Viewed in the light most favorable to Tommy, the record shows the following: in 1986, Tommy was an educable, mentally-handicapped, fifteen-year-old in the sixth grade; pursuant to an individual education plan developed by the school district, the school district, with his parent's consent, placed Tommy the following year in the ninth grade at McColl-Fletcher Memorial High School in Marlboro County; after he became a discipline problem, the school district tested Tommy and decided to place him in a self-contained class for educable, mentally-handicapped students at Bennettsville High School; his parents approved the decision on October 22, 1987; Tommy was to begin attending the new class on November 16, 1987; in the meanwhile, McColl-Fletcher's principal, who knew Tommy to be mentally handicapped and was aware of his disruptive behavior, instructed Tommy that he could skip a class if he "felt like he was getting into a situation that was going to cause him trouble" and that he was to report to a school janitor and "stay with him until he felt like he could go back into the class and behave;" on November 11, 1987, while in the company of a janitor and during a time when students were expected to be in class, Tommy and another student began wrestling in a hallway; the janitor did nothing to stop them from wrestling with each other, choosing instead to stand by and watch; Tommy was severely injured when he landed on top of his head; he was taken by ambulance to a hospital; and he remained hospitalized for several weeks until December 23, 1987.
The trial court erred in concluding the record contains no evidence that the school district exercised in a grossly negligent manner its duty to supervise students in its school. See S.C.Code Ann. § 15-78-60(25) (Supp.1991) (); 78 C.J.S. Schools and School Districts § 320, at 1324 (1952) (); id. § 321, at 1333 ().
Gross negligence, our Supreme Court has held, "is a relative term, and means the...
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