In Taylor v. Los Angeles Unified School District, ordered published July 2, 2025, the Second District Court of Appeal, Division 3 reversed a judgment based on a jury verdict. The defendant district hired a man as a part-time playground worker and supervisor for an afterschool program at an elementary school. In 2019, the district later assigned him to supervise a summer program at an elementary school which the plaintiff's decedent, age six, attended. At the end of the summer, the man returned to his employment at the previous school, which the decedent never attended. In December 2019, the plaintiff asked the man to babysit the decedent during the winter break at the man's home. She trusted the man because he worked for the district. She did not tell anyone that she had made the babysitting arrangements. The man's supervisors at the district were unaware the man was babysitting students until after he babysat the decedent. When the man brought the decedent home to the plaintiff after babysitting him, the child was expiring. The child died later that day from blunt force trauma caused by physical beating. The plaintiff sued the district for wrongful death. The case proceeded to trial on the plaintiff's cause of action for negligent hiring, supervision, and retention. The jury found the district negligent and attributed 90% fault to the district, 10% to the plaintiff, and none to the man who had killed the child. The district moved for JNOV and new trial, asserting the district was immune from liability under Education Code section 44808. The trial court denied both motions.
The appellate court ruled the trial court had erred in denying JNOV. A school district may be vicariously liable under Government Code section 815.2 for the negligence of administrators or supervisors in hiring, supervising, or retaining a school employee who harms a student, but only when no immunity provision applies. The district is immune from liability for the decedent's death under Education Code section 44808. The statute limits the liability of schools for after-hours, off-campus activity, unless the student was or should have been directly supervised during a specific undertaking by the district, including transportation or school-sponsored activities off-campus. The decedent did not die while the district was transporting him, while he was participating in a school-sponsored activity. The district did not specifically assume responsibility for the decedent's safety during the babysitting. There was no evidence that any district employee knew that the decedent was interacting with the man that winter. The plaintiff pointed to case law holding school districts liable when on-campus negligence causes an off-campus injury. But unlike those cases, the decedent's death did not arise from a negligent activity directly concerning him while on school premises that carried over into off-campus harm. To extend these cases to liability for any employee's off-campus tort that could somehow be traced back to negligent hiring and supervision would run afoul of section 44808's express purpose of limiting district liability for off-campus harm.
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