Osborn v. Waterbury

Excerpt

The plaintiff mother and her minor child, T, an elementary school student, sought to recover damages from the defendant city of Waterbury and the defendant Waterbury Board of Education for injuries that T sustained when she was physically assaulted by two or more schoolchildren on a Waterbury public school playground during recess. The plaintiffs alleged, inter alia, that the defendants and their employees failed to adequately supervise the schoolchildren, including T, both in and out of the classroom. The case was tried to the court, which found that T's injuries were the result of the defendants' failure to provide sufficient personnel to exercise proper control over the number of students on the playground at the time. There was evidence introduced at trial that the school had a student population of about 400 and that at least 2 paraprofessionals who attended the incident involving T ran from inside the building to address the situation. The defendants appealed to the Appellate Court from the judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, claiming that the trial court improperly rejected the defendants' special defense of governmental immunity, incorrectly concluded that T's injuries were caused when an inadequate number of staff members were assigned to supervise up to 400 students when there was evidence that there were no more than 50 students on the playground at the time in question, improperly found, in the absence of expert testimony, that the number of assigned staff members was insufficient to control as many as 400 students, and improperly awarded certain damages. The Appellate Court concluded that, in the absence of expert testimony, the trial court could not properly have found that the defendants breached their duty of care to T on the basis that there was an allegedly inadequate number of adults on the playground to supervise the students. Accordingly, the Appellate Court reversed the trial court's judgment and remanded the case to that court with direction