T.M. v. Detroit Pub. Sch., Christopher Lockhart, First Student, Inc.
| Decision Date | 26 July 2016 |
| Docket Number | Case Number 15-14406 |
| Parties | T.M., by her next friend MEAKA MOBLEY, Plaintiff, v. DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS, CHRISTOPHER LOCKHART, FIRST STUDENT, INC., and ANDRI MORNING, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan |
Honorable David M. Lawson
Plaintiff T.M. alleges in a complaint that she was the victim of an assault in January 2013 by her fellow students at the Marquette Academy, which is operated by defendant Detroit Public Schools. T.M. contends that while she was walking home, the driver of a bus operated by defendant First Student, Inc. made an unscheduled stop and allowed the assailants to debark and attack her. The case is now before the Court on a motion for summary judgment by defendant First Student, Inc. and its employee defendant Andri Morning. The defendants ask the Court to dismiss with prejudice the sole claim that the plaintiff has pleaded against them, which is count I of the amended complaint, alleging negligence and vicarious liability under state law. The Court heard oral argument on June 27, 2016. Because discovery is not complete, fact issues need resolution, and the record developed so far establishes a legal duty on the part of the defendants toward the plaintiff, the Court will deny the motion for summary judgment.
In January 2013, plaintiff T.M. was a student in the sixth grade at the Marquette Academy. Defendant First Student, Inc. operates school buses and transports students under a contract with defendant Detroit Public Schools. Defendant Andri Morning is a bus driver employed by First Student.
On January 16, 2013, T.M. saw a fight at school involving student R. Later, at lunch, R. asked T.M. who she thought had won the fight, and T.M. replied that she thought R. had lost. R. and a friend of hers then told T.M. that "[t]hey were going to fight me at the end of the day." At the end of the school day, R. punched T.M. on the side of her face when T.M. walked out of school. After R. hit her, T.M. fought back, but the school principal, defendant Christopher Lockhart, broke up the fight and took T.M. back into the building. Later, T.M. saw Lockhart speaking to Morning, who was the driver of the bus that T.M. rode to and from school. Lockhart escorted T.M. back out of the school building, and T.M. heard Lockhart tell Morning that T.M. would walk home. Lockhart then told T.M. to walk home and not ride the bus. T.M. complied because she wanted to avoid R., who rode the same bus, and she thought R. would try to start another fight with her.
T.M.'s mother testified that T.M. had called her during the school day about the fight, and she also spoke to Principal Lockhart on the phone about the incident. Lockhart told T.M.'s mother that he had spoken to defendant Morning and informed him that T.M. and her sister would be walking home, and there should be no contact between T.M. and R.
As T.M. was walking home with her sister, when she was almost at the corner by her house, she saw R. and several of R.'s friends get off the bus. R. started a fight with T.M. R. and two of her friends joined in the fight, pinned T.M. on the ground, and hit and kicked her in the head, face, back, and stomach, also pulling out some of her braids. Approximately fifteen other students also had gotten off the bus to watch the fight. Eventually, a boy in the audience broke up the fight and helped T.M. to get up. The other students who had watched the fight got back on the bus, but the three girls who had attacked T.M. ran away instead of reboarding the bus. T.M. testifed that she knew the normal route that the bus took because she rode it every day, and the corner where R. got off the bus was not a scheduled stop. Students only were allowed to exit at scheduled stops and could not get off the bus wherever they desired.
The plaintiff contends that the record is incomplete at this early stage of the proceedings and insufficient to allow a proper evaluation of the merits of her claims, because, among other things, she has not had a chance to depose defendant Lockhart and other representatives of the school district, or to take testimony from defendant Morning and other employees of defendant First Student, Inc., such as Morning's supervisor. As a result, there is nothing in the record to indicate what, if anything, occurred on the bus before the students disembarked, during the fight, or afterwards when the student onlookers got back on board and the bus left.
The plaintiff filed her amended complaint in the Wayne County, Michigan circuit court on October 14, 2015. The complaint pleads three counts for (1) negligence, against defendants First Student, Inc. and Andri Morning only (count I); (2) violation of the plaintiff's substantive due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, via 42 U.S.C. § 1983, against defendant Christopher Lockhart (count II); and (3) a Monell claim for deficient supervision and training against defendant Detroit Public Schools (count III). Defendant Detroit Public Schools removed the case to this Court on December 21, 2015. The complaint and other papers were amended to redact the names of the minors. Under the scheduling order entered by the Court, discovery remains open. Defendants First Student and Morning did not file an answer to the amended complaint, but instead responded by filing their motion for summary judgment.
They argue that (1) as a matter of law they had no duty to the plaintiff beyond their contractual obligation to provide transportation, because there was no "special relationship" between the defendants and the plaintiff, where the plaintiff was an ordinary pedestrian and not on the defendants' bus or in their care when the fight occurred; (2) it is a well-established general rule of law that an ordinary individual defendant has no duty to intervene and protect a plaintiff from an intentional assault by a third-party; (3) the defendants' conduct was not a proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries, which were not a foreseeable consequence of letting students off at the wrong bus stop; and (4) the intentional criminal assault of the plaintiff by her attackers was an intervening and superseding cause that severed the chain of proximate cause between the defendants' conduct and the plaintiff's injuries.
Summary judgment is appropriate "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). When reviewing the motion record, "[t]he court must view the evidence and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party, and determine 'whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law.'" Alexander v. CareSource, 576 F.3d 551, 557-58 (6th Cir. 2009) (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 251-52 (1986)).
"The party bringing the summary judgment motion has the initial burden of informing the district court of the basis for its motion and identifying portions of the record that demonstrate the absence of a genuine dispute over material facts." Id. at 558. (citing Mt. Lebanon Personal Care Home, Inc. v. Hoover Universal, Inc., 276 F.3d 845, 848 (6th Cir. 2002)). "Once that occurs, the party opposing the motion then may not 'rely on the hope that the trier of fact will disbelieve the movant's denial of a disputed fact' but must make an affirmative showing with proper evidence in order to defeat the motion." Ibid. (quoting Street v. J.C. Bradford & Co., 886 F.2d 1472, 1479 (6th Cir. 1989)).
A party opposing a motion for summary judgment must designate specific facts in affidavits, depositions, or other factual material showing "evidence on which the jury could reasonably find for the plaintiff." Anderson, 477 U.S. at 252. If the non-moving party, after sufficient opportunity for discovery, is unable to meet her burden of proof, summary judgment is clearly proper. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-23 (1986).
Irrelevant or unnecessary factual disputes do not create genuine issues of material fact. St. Francis Health Care Centre v. Shalala, 205 F.3d 937, 943 (6th Cir. 2000). A fact is "material" if its resolution affects the outcome of the lawsuit. Lenning v. Commercial Union Ins. Co., 260 F.3d 574, 581 (6th Cir. 2001). "Materiality" is determined by the substantive law claim. Boyd v. Baeppler, 215 F.3d 594, 599 (6th Cir. 2000). An issue is "genuine" if a "reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party." Henson v. Nat'l Aeronautics & Space Admin., 14 F.3d 1143, 1148 (6th Cir. 1994) (quoting 477 U.S. at 248).
The plaintiffs brought their claims against defendants First Student and Morning under Michigan negligence law, and the case against those defendants is before the Court under its supplemental jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a) (); see also Harper v. AutoAlliance Int'l, Inc., 392 F.3d 195, 209 (6th Cir. 2004). "A federal court exercising supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims is bound to apply the law of the forum state to the same extent as if it were exercising its diversity jurisdiction." Super Sulky, Inc. v. U.S. Trotting Ass'n, 174 F.3d 733, 741 (6th Cir. 1999). In such cases, the Court must apply the law of the forum state's highest court. Erie R.R. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938). If the state's highest court has not decided an issue, then "the federal court must ascertain the state law from 'all...
To continue reading
Request your trial