Pace v. State
| Decision Date | 22 February 2012 |
| Docket Number | 2010.,Sept. Term,No. 132,132 |
| Citation | 38 A.3d 418,425 Md. 145,278 Ed. Law Rep. 444 |
| Parties | Nicole PACE, as Mother and Next Friend of Liana Pace v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Philip J. Sweitzer, Baltimore, MD, for Petitioner.
William H. Fields, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Douglas M. Gansler, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for Respondent.
Argued before BELL, C.J., HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, ADKINS, BARBERA and JOHN C. ELDRIDGE, (retired, specially assigned), JJ.
The mother of a kindergarten student who suffered a serious allergic reaction after consuming peanut butter given to her under her school's free lunch program brought suit in the Circuit Court for Frederick County against the State of Maryland and its agents, alleging that the State's obligations under the National School Lunch Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1751–1769 (2006) (“NSLA”) imposed upon the defendants a statutory duty of care to ensure that children with food allergies are not served lunches containing allergens. The trial court granted the State defendants' motion to dismiss on the ground that the NSLA merely establishes a subsidized lunch program for the benefit all children at participating schools, and does not impose a specific statutory duty of care towards children with food allergies. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the dismissal. After examining the statute at issue, we agree with the determinations of the trial and intermediate appellate courts and therefore also affirm the dismissal, as a negligence action may not be maintained in the absence of a demonstrable duty.
Liana Pace, a five-year-old kindergarten student, suffered an anaphylactic 1 reaction after being exposed to peanut butter at lunchtime. It is alleged that at the beginning of the school year, Liana's mother, Nicole Pace, informed Hillcrest Elementary School in Frederick, Maryland, about her daughter's severe allergy to peanuts. In October, Liana's allergist provided the school nurse with a pre-measured dose of epinephrine to be used in the event Liana was exposed to peanut products.
On November 9, 2005, Liana went to the school cafeteria without a lunch or sufficient funds in her cafeteria account to purchase a lunch. In these instances, Hillcrest Elementary would serve students a “credit lunch” consisting of either a bologna sandwich or a peanut butter sandwich. These lunches were subsidized by federal funds administered by the State of Maryland under the National School Lunch Act (“NSLA”). On this particular day, a cafeteria worker gave Liana a peanut butter sandwich. Liana resisted eating the sandwich, informing the worker that she was not allowed to have peanut butter. The worker mistook her protests as misbehavior and ordered her to eat the sandwich. Liana complied. The child immediately began experiencing an anaphylactic reaction; her airway and eyelids began to swell, and she became lethargic and confused. Approximately a half an hour later, she was taken to the nurse's suite and her mother was contacted. Ms. Pace told the nurse to administer the epinephrine dose. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Pace arrived at the school and rode with her daughter in an ambulance from the elementary school to Frederick Memorial Hospital, where Liana was observed and eventually released.
Following the allergic episode, Liana began to “experience symptoms of extreme psychological perturbation and post-traumatic distress,” exhibit “ regressive behavior such as thumb sucking and withdrawal” and, ultimately, fear attending school. As a result, at the close of 2005, Ms. Pace withdrew Liana from Hillcrest Elementary and moved with her daughter to Michigan to reside with Liana's maternal grandmother.
On November 8, 2006, Nicole Pace (hereinafter “Ms. Pace” or “Petitioner”) filed suit on behalf of her daughter in the Circuit Court for Frederick County against the State of Maryland, the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE), the State Superintendent of Schools, (hereinafter “the State defendants” or “Respondents”), the Board of Education of Frederick County, the Superintendent of the Frederick County Public Schools, the principal of Hillcrest Elementary, and three unnamed cafeteria workers (hereinafter “the County defendants”).2 While Ms. Pace asserted a variety of claims against the County defendants, her complaint included only a single count of negligence against the State defendants, based on an alleged breach of a statutory duty under the National School Lunch Act (NSLA). It alleged in pertinent part:
19. [The State] [d]efendants ... are under a regulatory duty pursuant to COMAR 13A.06.01.01 to administer the State's public school lunch programs in accordance with the provisions of the [NSLA], codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 1751 et seq. (2006). The statutory provisions of the Act impose an affirmative duty on the State of Maryland to tailor school lunch program menus and foods offered to individual students according to their “individual dietary and medical” needs. 42 U.S.C. § 1758 (2006). The Code of Federal Regulations also requires monitoring by the states to ensure compliance with the statute. 7 C.F.R. § 15b; 7 C.F.R. § 210.10(g)(1).
20. The explosive nature of peanut allergy, moreover, is specifically well-known to the State, which has developed extensive policies for the management of anaphylactic reactions ; however, the State has not applied these metrics and administrative strategies to the management of individual dietary needs of students in school lunch programs, state-wide. The State, therefore, has breached its statutory duty under the [NSLA]. This is all the more egregious, because the State has an extensive policy for after-the-fact management of anaphylactic reactions, yet no specific administrative protocol in place to minimize dietary exposures in school lunch programs so such exposures do not occur.
21. As a result of the State's negligence, school administration and cafeteria staff at the Hillcrest Elementary School did not have the proper dietary “flagging” regimen or administrative program in place, to notify cafeteria workers of Liana's extreme allergic sensitivity.
22. As a result of the State's negligence, school administration at the Hillcrest Elementary School did not have a uniform plan implemented to inform cafeteria workers, who served Liana the very foodstuff she could not tolerate, which produced the life-threatening anaphylactic reaction and accompanying fear and severe emotional distress.
On February 27, 2007, the State defendants moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that they were not proper parties to the action because the State's role under the NSLA is limited to reimbursement and periodic monitoring, while the local school boards actually operate the school lunch program within their districts. They also moved to dismiss on the ground of governmental immunity. On March 15, 2007, Ms. Pace filed a response to the motion to dismiss reiterating her allegation that the NSLA places an independent duty on the State “to administer school lunch and free feeding programs in accordance with individual student dietary and medical needs,” and cited to several federal regulations not included within the complaint. On this same day, Ms. Pace filed an amended complaint that corrected typographical errors, but otherwise made clear that it “incorporate[d] the allegations of the original Complaint essentially verbatim.” The Circuit Court held a hearing on the State defendants' motion on June 20, 2007, and in a later-filed opinion and order, determined that Ms. Pace had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court ruled:
In the case sub judice, it is not disputed that the State had a statutory obligation to establish a free feeding program and to ensure that it was implemented in the schools. This program includes a provision to ensure that the needs of children with special dietary needs are met. However, the State did not have a specific statutory duty to control the acts of the school employees or to ensure that each child received the correct food.3
Ms. Pace appealed the trial court's dismissal, and the Court of Special Appeals affirmed the ruling. Pace v. State, 195 Md.App. 32, 5 A.3d 1121 (2010). The intermediate appellate court stated:
[W]e conclude that the circuit court did not err in concluding that the NSLA does not impose a special duty upon the State defendants to exercise a greater degree of care for students with food allergies than the general level of care for health and safety the State defendants exercise for all students in public schools.
Pace, 195 Md.App. at 52, 5 A.3d at 1132.
We granted Petitioner's writ of certiorari, Pace v. State, 418 Md. 190, 13 A.3d 798 (2011), which asked us to determine:
Whether the trial court erred in granting the State Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, finding that the State had no duty of care to the Plaintiff['s daughter], rather than a special or statutory duty to ensure her ‘individual,’ ‘special’ dietary needs were met and to protect her from discrimination on the basis of either race or disability in the administration of the school lunch program[.]
We answer that question in the negative and therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.
To sufficiently plead a cause of action for negligence in Maryland, a plaintiff must “allege with certainty and definiteness, facts and circumstances sufficient to set forth (a) a duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, (b) a breach of that duty and (c) injury proximately resulting from that breach.” Pendleton v. State, 398 Md. 447, 458, 921 A.2d 196, 202–03 (2007) (emphasis in original) (quoting Scott v. Jenkins, 345 Md. 21, 28, 690 A.2d 1000, 1003 (1997)). Thus, the initial requisite element is that “there must exist a duty which is owed by the defendant to the plaintiff to observe that care which the law prescribes in the...
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