Legal Question in Personal Injury in Maryland

Re: School liability for field trips and terrorism

The only way that liability would attach is where the school breached a duty owed to the students or parents.

The school has a duty to ensure the safety of students. Whether they could breach this duty based on an act of terrorism that causes harm is speculative.

The plaintiff (the suing parent) would have to show that the threat of harm was reasonably foreseeable. A code orange arguably raises a general specter of a threat but

the focal question would be whether the specific threat was foreseeable. Although I doubt that such a case would be sustained to judgment, this does not mean that the filing of such a

cause of action would be precluded. Arguably such a cause of action has merit and therefore would not be considered frivilous. Thus, the claim would likely not be summarily dismissed.

The end result is that the "possibility of a claim" occurring and the costs involved with defending it may be enough to justify the position of the school official.

I would pursue the issue from the perspective of whether this "possibility" outweighs the educational value of the field trips. I would request that this matter be reviewed and that such an analysis be quantified.

Field trips, especially ones that involve coordination and presentation by the place being visited, can be of significant educational value. This is even more so where there is an educational curriculum that incorporates

and expands upon the visit (i.e., research papers, in class discussion, etc.)

In final analysis, the relevant issue is whether the place to be visited is truly a "potential target" or merely a target of general possibility. Frankly, the position taken by the school official tends to indicate that schools should be closed

because the schools themselves could be a target. If the school official recalls, schools were not closed even though they were a specific target during the sniper attacks. This is because the threat was outweighed by the value of an education. To have closed the schools would not only have adversely impacted educational objectives but would

have undermined the continuity of life in our communities (i.e., parents would encounter problems with working because of schools being closed). With respect to field trips, not only is the educational value something that may be diminished but also the

character of our children. If our children follow the example of not going out into public for fear of a generalized threat, we essentially teach them to forego community living.

Cultural, historical, scientific, civic, and inspiration sites all around the country are potential "generalized" targets. Should we be teaching our children that these sites are not worthwhile to visit merely because of a general threat? This seems to me to undermine what it is to be an American citizen.

G. Joseph Holthaus

(410) 799-9002

Re: School liability for field trips and terrorism

It's highly unlikely that a school or other organization could be held responsible for injuries sustained by persons on a field trip due to acts of terrorism. The issue is foreseeability. While we may be aware of a general concern that acts of terrorism might occur somewhere, we don't have sufficient information to know when and where. It would take a highly unusual set of circumstances, such as a field trip to a specific area which has been publicly pinpointed as a haven of danger of some sort, to create the necessary degree of foreseeability to place liability on the school. Even then, unless the school knew that some event was likely to take place during the field trip, they probably wouldn't be considered liable.