Facts
- Abel Limones, Jr., a fifteen-year-old high school soccer player, collapsed during an interscholastic match between two schools operated by the same school district.
- There was no evidence the collapse resulted from contact with another player.
- A coach ran to Abel, who soon stopped breathing, lost consciousness, and had no detectable pulse.
- An administrator called 911; two parents who were nurses assisted; CPR was started.
- An on-site automated external defibrillator (AED) was available at the facility, and the coach was AED-certified, but no one brought the AED to the field or attempted to use it before emergency responders arrived.
- Emergency responders arrived about ten minutes after the collapse; AED shocks and medications were later administered, and Abel was revived about twenty-six minutes after collapsing.
- Abel suffered severe anoxic brain injury and remained in a near persistent vegetative state requiring lifelong care.
- Plaintiffs’ expert opined Abel had an undetected heart condition and that earlier AED shocks likely would have restored oxygenation sooner and prevented the brain injury.
- Plaintiffs sued the school district for negligence based on common-law duties of supervision and post-injury aid, and referenced statutes requiring AED availability and trained personnel at athletic events.
Issues
- Whether a school district’s common-law duty to supervise students includes a duty, once a student is injured, to take reasonable measures to provide aid and prevent aggravation of injury.
- Whether the statutory scheme regarding AEDs created a duty to use an AED or instead informed the standard of reasonable care.
- Whether statutory AED immunity applied when no one used or attempted to use an AED.
- Whether summary judgment improperly resolved fact questions about reasonable emergency response under the guise of deciding “duty.”
Decision
- The Florida Supreme Court quashed the appellate decision affirming summary judgment for the school district and remanded for further proceedings.
- The Court held the school district owed a common-law duty to supervise Abel and, after he was injured, to take reasonable measures to aid him and prevent aggravation of his injury.
- The Court held AED immunity did not apply because immunity requires actual or attempted AED use, and no AED was used or attempted.
- The Court held that whether reasonable care in these circumstances required retrieval and attempted use of the on-site AED, and whether any failure caused the injury, were questions for the jury.
Legal Principles
- In negligence, duty is a threshold legal question focusing on whether the defendant’s conduct created a foreseeable zone of risk of the general type of harm suffered.
- The school–student relationship is a special relationship that imposes a duty of reasonable supervision and, once a student is injured, a duty to take reasonable steps to provide aid and prevent aggravation.
- Courts should not convert the duty inquiry into a fact-intensive determination of the specific emergency measures required; questions of breach and causation generally belong to the factfinder.
- Statutory AED requirements may inform the standard of care for an existing common-law duty without necessarily creating an independent private cause of action or a per se duty to use an AED.
- AED statutory immunity applies only to those who use or attempt to use an AED under specified conditions; it does not provide immunity for nonuse.
Conclusion
The court reinstated the case for trial, holding that the school district owed a common-law duty to provide reasonable post-injury aid to a student-athlete, that AED immunity did not bar liability where no AED use was attempted, and that the reasonableness of the school’s response and causation were for the jury rather than resolvable on summary judgment.