f immunity is applicable, a plaintiff allegedly injured by school action can recover only from individual teachers or other school employees. Where immunity has been abolished, the school board or school district can be held liable for its own negligence or intentional torts, or they can be held vicariously (strictly) liable for the negligence or intentional torts of their employees.
Teachers were regarded to be in loco parentis, to stand in the place of a student's parents. Teachers were liable in negligence actions only for their proven failure to exercise due care, which was the proximate cause of injury. In most cases which imposed liability under state law, very serious failures of supervision were present, such as in the landmark case of Daily v. Los Angeles School District. In that case, a gym instructor allowed 'slap boxing' to go on in his class, which resulted in the death by skull fracture of one of his students (Tanner, 1972, p. 526).
Plaintiffs have rarely succeeded in prevailing in actions aimed at holding schools or teachers liable for sports injuries or in cases involving injuries inflicted on students by teachers or vice-versa. In one 1987 New York case, the court said that, "the school board did not assume an affirmative duty to protect teachers and from students," and, in another the same year, that "a board of education is not an insurer of its students' safety" (Recent Developments," 1988, Winter, p. 329). Attempts by students disappointed with the results of their education to sue schools and teachers for educational malpractice have generally failed (Newman, 1990, p. 110).
Creation of Federal Private Causes of Action
After the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that de facto racial segregation in the public school violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the federal courts assumed primary responsibility for desegregating the nation's...