Facts
- Bethany Jill Gross enrolled in a doctoral psychology program at Nova Southeastern University and relocated to Fort Lauderdale to attend.
- Nova required students to complete an eleven-month, off-campus internship (practicum) as part of the curriculum.
- Nova maintained a list of approved practicum sites and assigned each student to a site after the student selected preferred options.
- Gross selected six sites and Nova assigned her to Family Services Agency, Inc. (FSA), near the university.
- After leaving FSA one evening, Gross was confronted in the FSA parking lot by an armed assailant, abducted, robbed, and sexually assaulted.
- Evidence indicated Nova had been informed of multiple criminal incidents occurring at or near the FSA parking lot before Gross’s attack.
- Gross sued FSA and Nova for negligence; she settled with FSA and pursued Nova, alleging negligent placement at an unreasonably dangerous site and failure to warn.
Issues
- Whether a university may be liable in tort for assigning a student to a mandatory internship site the university knows is unreasonably dangerous, where the university provides no warning or an inadequate warning and the student is injured.
- Whether summary judgment was proper on the ground that the university owed no duty for injuries occurring at an off-campus placement.
Decision
- The Florida Supreme Court answered the certified question “yes” and approved the appellate decision reversing summary judgment for Nova.
- The Court held that, under the alleged circumstances, Nova could owe Gross a duty of reasonable care in the internship assignment process.
- The Court did not determine breach, causation, or damages; it held only that duty could exist as a matter of law, making summary judgment inappropriate.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings.
Legal Principles
- A party that voluntarily undertakes to act must do so with reasonable care to avoid foreseeable injury to others.
- A university that requires an off-campus internship and controls or substantially influences student placement may have a special relationship with the student supporting a duty of reasonable care in making assignments.
- Foreseeability informed duty: prior known criminal activity at or near an assigned site can make harm sufficiently foreseeable to require reasonable precautions.
- The duty is not limited to warning; it can include other reasonable steps in response to known, foreseeable dangers, without creating a guarantee of safety.
- Off-campus location alone does not eliminate duty when the institution’s assignment is a required component of the academic program.
Conclusion
The Florida Supreme Court held that when a university mandates an internship and assigns students to specific sites, it may owe a duty of reasonable care if it knows or should know a site presents unreasonable, foreseeable dangers; therefore, a no-duty ruling based solely on the off-campus setting cannot support summary judgment.