Tort/Negligence – Duty of Care to Student – Agency Relationship

Defendant owed no legal duty to protect Plaintiff from an off-campus assault by fellow students and that no agency relationship or ratification theory supported liability.

We affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the university.

A violent altercation occurred in a campus apartment involving several student-athletes, during which Plaintiff sustained injuries after being attacked by teammates. Following the incident, the university conducted an internal investigation and imposed disciplinary sanctions on multiple students, including Plaintiff.

Plaintiff later filed suit asserting claims for battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress, arguing that the university was liable based on a special relationship, its internal policies, and principles of agency. The trial court granted summary judgment on all claims, and Plaintiff appealed.

On appeal, we focused first on whether the university owed a duty of care, a threshold requirement for negligence claims. We reiterated longstanding precedent that a university is not generally an insurer of student safety and that the student-university relationship, standing alone, does not create a special relationship giving rise to a duty. We distinguished prior cases recognizing a duty in the context of school-sponsored activities, emphasizing that the plaintiff’s injuries occurred during a private, off-hours altercation in a dormitory rather than during an organized athletic or institutional event. Because the circumstances fell outside the narrow category where a special relationship might exist, we held that no duty arose.

We also rejected Plaintiff’s argument that the university’s own disciplinary policies created a duty of care. Internal rules and codes of conduct do not independently establish a legal duty enforceable in tort absent a recognized legal relationship imposing such an obligation.

Turning to agency, Plaintiff argued that the university should be liable for the actions of the student-athletes as its agents. We found no evidence of the essential elements of an agency relationship, namely, that the university exercised control over the specific conduct at issue or authorized the students to act on its behalf. Similarly, we rejected Plaintiff’s ratification theory, concluding that the university’s disciplinary response to the incident did not constitute approval or adoption of the wrongful conduct.

Because Plaintiff failed to establish the existence of a duty or any viable theory of vicarious liability, we held that no genuine issue of material fact existed. Accordingly, the grant of summary judgment in favor of the university was affirmed.

Affirmed.

Dales v. Gardner-Webb University (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-065-26, 12 pp.) (John Tyson, J.) Appealed from Edgecombe County Superior Court (John M. Dunlow, J.) Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy & Kennedy, L.L.P., by Harvey L. Kennedy, and Harold L. Kennedy, III, for the plaintiff-appellant. Cranfill Sumner LLP, by Patrick H. Flanagan, Joseph R. Holguin, and Steven A. Bader, for the defendant-appellee. North Carolina Court of Appeals