NC Court: Board of Education is Immune in Lawsuit Regarding Middle School Football Player’s Death

The North Carolina Court of Appeals building in Raleigh, where Seymour v. Orange County Board of Education was decided. Source.

At the first football practice of the season on August 22, 2016, Fred Seymour, a rising 8th grader at Gravelly Middle School in Orange County, collapsed due to difficulty breathing. The team coaches called 911, and Seymour was transported to a local hospital where passed away three days later on August 25. Seymour’s parents brought a wrongful death lawsuit against the Orange County Board of Education in July of 2018, alleging that the school was negligent in failing to abide by the emergency action plan put in place to protect Seymour. The suit claimed that the coaches (school board representatives) failed to provide timely care, and failed to call 911 in a timely manner, which ultimately contributed to Fred Seymour’s death. Unfortunately for the family, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled on February 2, 2021 that the case be dismissed as the Orange County Board of Education’s governmental immunity shielded the Board from such a claim.

Governmental immunity is similar to the principle of sovereign immunity, which shields a state or federal government from liability unless the government explicitly waives its immunity or the case represents a recognized exception to the principle of sovereign immunity. One such case in which immunity would be waived is if the government was performing a “proprietary function” rather than a governmental function. Trey Allen, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Government explained that “proprietary functions include those activities which are not traditionally performed by a government agency... [t]hey tend to be activities which also are performed by the private sector, which benefit a definable category of individuals rather than the general public.” In their immediate response to the suit, the Board of Education sought to dismiss the claim on the basis that it had not waived its governmental immunity. Seymour’s family did not allege an automatic immunity exception on the grounds of proprietary function, but they did still argue that the Board of Education had waived its right to immunity because the Board purchased insurance for school-related activities. The initial trial court agreed, denying the Board of Education’s motion to dismiss. The Board of Education appealed that decision to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. The appellate court reversed the lower court’s decision in March of 2020, saying that the Board of Education was in fact shielded from liability. Seymour’s family petitioned for and was granted a rehearing, which resulted in the Court of Appeals decision to uphold their earlier judgement on February 2, 2021.

The Court’s analysis hinges on the text of North Carolina General Statute Section 115C-42 and the provisions of the Orange County Board of Education’s insurance policy. The statute provides that county boards of education in North Carolina can and do waive their governmental immunity by obtaining insurance, but only “to the extent that said board of education is indemnified by insurance for such negligence or tort.” While the Orange County board of education has an insurance policy, the policy specifically excludes claims related to athletics, including “any ‘Claim’ made by an athletics participant (or made by the parent(s) or guardian(s) of an athletics participant for the participant’s medical expenses) arising out of or in connection with...athletics,” as quoted in the court’s decision. The school board argued in its brief that because the insurance policy specifically barred collections based on claims related to athletics, their governmental immunity had not been waived. The family argued in their brief that their claim did not fall under the athletic provision for technical reasons. The appeals court disagreed with the family’s reasoning, holding that the case should be dismissed.

While it may be the right decision on a technical level for the case to be dismissed, the Appellate Court’s decision still reeks of a miscarriage of justice. Regardless of whether the Board of Education was negligent in this particular case, it symbolizes a bleak reality: that individuals in North Carolina can be severely wronged by their state or local government and still be completely unable to recover damages. Moreover, the statute implicated in this case and the associated decision might indicate that county boards of education are better off paying for no insurance or a very limited amount of insurance, rather than looking after their students. This is no doubt a harmful precedent for school boards and their relationship with students and parents.