Thurman v. Applebrook County Dayschool, Inc.: Day Care and Crib Death: Do Day Care Centers Have a Higher Standard of Care Than Asn Average Parent?
| Publication year | 2005 |
| Pages | 0001 |
GSB Vol. 10, No. 6, Pg. 1. Thurman v. Applebrook County Dayschool, Inc.: Day Care and Crib Death: Do Day Care Centers Have A Higher Standard of Care Than Asn Average Parent?
Vol. 10, No. 6, April 2005
In Thurman v. Applebrook Country Dayschool, Inc.,1 the Supreme Court of Georgia considered the tragic case of a day care center crib death in which an infant was placed on his stomach, rather than on his back, to sleep. The plaintiffs argued that the day care center should have placed the infant on his back in accordance with the latest medical recommendations for putting babies to sleep. The court had to decide what negligence standard applied. Was it the relatively forgiving standard of the "average reasonable parent?" Surely, a parent would not ordinarily be considered negligent just for placing a baby on his or her stomach for a nap. But what if the standard was that of the "reasonable day care provider," who should have knowledge of the latest medical recommendations, including those of the "Back to Sleep" campaign launched in 1994 to advise that babies be put on their backs to sleep to lower the risk of crib death?2 If the latter standard applied, expert testimony on recommendations in the day care industry would be admissible. The Supreme Court ruled in Thurman that the appropriate standard was "that of a reasonably prudent person under like circumstances" and that expert testimony on infant sleep positioning standards in the day care industry was admissible.3 The court rejected the Court of Appeals' conclusion that the issue of whether the day care provider breached the standard of care was a lay question, which the jury could answer without expert guidance. Further, the court ended a trend toward applying an "average reasonable parent" standard in all child supervision cases. The court held that the particular circumstances of a day care center setting affect the determination of whether the defendant was negligent. Expert testimony is admissible to assist juries in defining and applying the appropriate standard of care in cases involving allegations of negligent supervision by day care providers.4 Emphasis on the particularized "circumstances" of the day care setting should bring a suitable dose of professionalism to the child-care field by ensuring that courts hold providers to contemporary industry standards. On the other hand, the Supreme Court's movement away from the comparatively forgiving "average reasonable parent" standard to a more demanding circumstance- driven standard injects a troubling level of ambiguity for the ordinary parent. If a crib death occurs at home, what standard will apply to the parent? Will knowledge and implementation of the latest medical recommendations become the standard even for ordinary parents, or does that standard only apply to professional caretakers? In all likelihood, the Supreme Court's decision does not mean that ordinary parents and other non-professionals will be accountable for the fulfillment of all of the latest child-care practices to which professional day care providers should be expected to adhere.
The Traditional Childcare Supervision Standard
The Court of Appeals of Georgia delineated the traditional standard of care in negligent child supervision cases in Laite v. Baxter.5 In that case, a nearly 13-year-old boy slipped and fell into the water while on a fishing trip with his friend's family and subsequently died from injuries received from the fall. His mother brought a wrongful death claim against the father of her son's friend on the basis of negligent supervision.6 In affirming summary judgment for the defendant, the Court of Appeals articulated the standard of care as follows: [T]he measure of duty of a person undertaking control and supervision of a child to exercise reasonable care for the safety of the child is to be gauged by the standard of the average responsible parent; such person is not an insurer of the safety of the child and has no duty to foresee and guard against every possible hazard. The measure of precaution which must be taken by one having a child in his care, who stands in no relation to the child except that he has undertaken to care for it, is that care which a prudent person would exercise under like circumstances. As a general rule, a person who undertakes the control and supervision of a child, even without compensation, has the duty to use reasonable care to protect the child from injury. Such person is not an insurer of the safety of the child. He is required only to use reasonable care commensurate with the reasonably foreseeable risks of harm.7 Furthermore, "[c]hildren of tender years and youthful persons generally are entitled to care proportioned to their inability to foresee and avoid the perils that they may encounter, as well as to the superior knowledge of persons who come into contact with them."8 Thus, the elements of the duty of care assumed by one who undertakes the care and supervision of a child include:
action consistent with that of the "average responsible parent";
the care "a prudent person would exercise under like circumstances";
reasonable foreseeability of the risk of the type of harm suffered; and
action in accordance with any superior knowledge the person may have.
In Laite, the court concluded that the decedent's death resulted from a risk that should have been obvious to a child of his age; it was merely an accident that involved no breach of supervisory duty.9 Two decades later, in Wallace v. Boys Club of Albany, Ga., Inc.,10 the Court of Appeals applied and reaffirmed the standard of care it had adopted in Laite.11 In that case, the parents of a 5-year-old boy alleged negligent supervision after the child left the defendant's summer day camp unaccompanied and was subsequently abducted and assaulted by a third party.12 In addition to applying and reaffirming the standard of care it had adopted in Laite, the Court of Appeals expanded the duty owed by one who undertakes the supervision of a child to include obligations expressly assumed by the care provider, i.e., "the duty arising from defendant's policies, its promises to [the] parents to enforce those policies, and [the] parents' reliance on those promises." 13 In reversing summary judgment for the defendant, the Court of Appeals concluded that the risk of the type of harm suffered by the child - the risk that an unsupervised 5-year-old on the street could be abducted and assaulted - was sufficiently common and foreseeable for a jury to find that the defendant's duty of care encompassed protection from such a danger.14
The Abandonment of Foreseeability
Later cases streamlined the formulation of the standard of care. In La Petite Academy, Inc. v....
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