Farley v. El Tejon Unified School Dist

In Farley v. El Tejon Unified School Dist. (1990) 225 Cal.App.3d 371, the facts were that the schoolbus driver stopped to let children out at the usual stop on one side of the road, where many of the children normally had to cross the road to get to the operative destination there (store and parking lot where parents waited). The appellate court interpreted the last paragraph of section 44808 (that liability for the safety of a pupil exists only while the pupil is/should be under the immediate and direct supervision of an employee of the district), as raising the question of how this duty should be applied: "Whether or not student should have been 'under the immediate and direct supervision of an employee of the District' depends on whether the exercise of reasonable care under the circumstances required" its bus driver to exercise more supervision. (225 Cal.App.3d at p. 377.) In Farley, those specific circumstances did give rise to a duty of reasonable care that required the bus driver to supervise the student's crossing of the road, after being discharged from the bus, quite apart from the statutory duty to turn on the red lights. (Veh. Code, 22112.) Thus, in Farley, supra, 225 Cal.App.3d 371, it was deemed to be a triable issue of fact whether the exercise of "reasonable care under the circumstances" ( 44808) would require a schoolbus driver, who had knowledge of the road conditions there, to "supervise the children's safe crossing" (Farley, supra, at p. 380) of the road after the children exited the bus. Further, if the trier of fact found the district to be negligent under the circumstances, by breaching that duty, the trier of fact would next have to address "whether the act or omission forming the basis of such finding is a proximate cause of the accident and student's resulting damages ... ." (Ibid.) "The ultimate issue here, therefore, is whether the school district, acting through its officers and employees, was negligent under the circumstances as shown by the evidence." (Id. at p. 379.)