Turner v. Caddo Parish School Bd., 49021

Decision Date28 June 1968
Docket NumberNo. 49021,49021
Citation214 So.2d 153,252 La. 810
Parties, 35 A.L.R.3d 718 Ruth Parker TURNER v. CADDO PARISH SCHOOL BOARD.
CourtLouisiana Supreme Court

John A. Richardson, Dist. Atty., Booth, Lockard, Jack, Pleasant & LeSage, Shreveport, for relator.

Jack & Jack, Shreveport, for respondent.

T. K. Giddens, Jr., Shreveport, for third-party defendants.

HAMITER, Justice.

In this tort action Mrs. Ruth Parker Turner sought to recover damages from the Caddo Parish School Board for personal injuries sustained while she was a spectator at a football game played between Midway and Lakeshore Junior High Schools in Shreveport.

Originally, her suit was dismissed on an exception of no cause of action. On an appeal the judgment was reversed, the exception overruled, and the case remanded for a trial on the merits. Turner v. Caddo Parish School Board, La.App., 179 So.2d 702.

Following such trial, but before judgment, Mrs. Turner died from causes not related to the injuries received in the accident. Whereupon, the administrator of her estate was substituted as plaintiff. (The defendant has not challenged the right of the administrator to prosecute the demand.)

Thereafter, the district court rendered judgment in favor of the defendant, it dismissing plaintiff's suit. But that judgment was reversed by the Court of Appeal which awarded to plaintiff the sum of $18,500 as damages. Turner v. Caddo Parish School Board, La.App., 204 So.2d 294.

We granted certiorari on defendant's application. 251 La. 756, 206 So.2d 98.

The record establishes the hereinafter recited facts.

On October 17, 1963 Mrs. Turner, who was seventy-one years of age and the grandmother of one of the players on the Midway Junior High School football team, attended the game between Midway and Lakeshore Junior High Schools, this at the invitation of another grandson. She was accompanied by the latter, and by her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Dumas.

The game was one of a regular schedule in a league made up of the seven junior high schools in Caddo Parish. No admission was charged for any of the games; and while parents and other family members, as well as the general public, were permitted and welcomed to attend they were not specially invited or encouraged by the school officials to do so either directly or indirectly. No publicity or advance notice of the games were provided by the schools to any persons other than to the students. Such games, as was the one in question, were played in the afternoons (after school hours) on regulation size, lined football fields, located in the various school yards, they doubling as playground and physical education training areas during the regular school day. At none of the schools were bleachers or other permanent seats afforded.

The Midway-Lakeshore game was played at the Lakeshore school. Various persons in attendance estimated the crowd at from six hundred to one thousand people. No raised, physical barriers separated the playing field from the spectator areas. However, on both sides, at approximately the fifty-yard line, were benches for the use of the respective teams; and white 'chalk lines', marked on the ground with powdered marble (the same material used to delineate and mark the playing field), indicated the restraining lines behind which spectators were supposed to sit or stand.

At midfield (between the forty-yard lines) the spectator, restraining lines paralleled the sidelines of the field some 25 to 30 feet distant therefrom. From the forty-yard line they angled toward the sidelines to points approximately three to nine feet at the end zone lines.

Two, perhaps three, of the other junior high schools used a raised rope or chain to designate the spectator zone on the west or 'home team' side of the field. The others marked that zone in a manner similar to the one at Lakeshore. All marked the spectator zone on the east, or 'visitor's', side with a chalk line, as did Lakeshore.

After Mrs. Turner and the members of her family arrived at the school they stationed themselves on the east side to watch the game, they remaining throughout their stay at about the forty-yard line. Other spectators moved up and down the sidelines with the play of the ball.

At some time late in the third quarter, or in the early part of the fourth quarter, a play went out of bounds in the area in which Mrs. Turner was standing. At that time there were spectators in front of her. They moved back to get out of the way of the players who ran into Mrs. Turner, knocking her down and injuring her.

Initially, Mrs. Turner had stood very close to, if not on, the sideline. However, on finding it too crowded there, she moved back some little distance, and she was about six feet from the sideline when she was struck. (Mrs. Dumas placed her mother's distance therefrom at approximately twenty-one feet. However, the testimony of Mrs. Turner herself, Mr. Dumas and other witnesses placed her much closer at the time of the accident.)

In the course of conducting such games at Lakeshore the school officials had not only designated a restraining line or spectator zone by the 'chalk line', but they also assigned two male 'duty teachers' specifically to effect what might be called 'spectator control'. Part of their duties consisted of going up and down the sidelines and pushing the spectators back when they encroached too far into the zone between the restraining lines and sidelines of the field. Also the principal and assistant principal attended the game in their supervisory capacities and assisted the teachers. Further, it was understood that any other teachers at the game would assist in any manner found necessary, although they were not specifically on duty. The record reflects that this method of handling the spectators had been entirely satisfactory, and that prior to this incident there had been no instance of any injury suffered in the manner as occurred to Mrs. Turner.

On the day in question the duty teachers had, several times before the accident, passed up and down the sidelines (particularly where Mrs. Turner was standing) admonishing the spectators to get behind the restraining line; and they had on at least one or two occasions actually caused them to move behind it. In fact, Mr. John Langdon, one of the duty teachers, specifically remembered the incident; and he observed, with respect to the players' going out of bounds, that 'I had just moved that group back.' (This, incidentally, may account for Mrs. Dumas' belief that her mother was approximately twenty-one feet from the sideline when the accident occurred. That is, she may have, a few minutes before, seen her moved back and had not realized that she had come forward again.)

In at least one instance shortly before the accident players had gone out of bounds in the very area where plaintiff was standing, and the officials had cautioned the spectators there to move back. Also some twenty minutes or so prior to the play on which Mrs. Turner was injured another play had occurred which carried the players off the field on the west side (opposite Mrs. Turner), it requiring a lady who was sitting at that point to scramble back to keep from getting hit.

While Mrs. Turner stated that...

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