Plaintiff Morgan Dennehy, a 17 year old high school senior, filed a lawsuit against her hockey team coach, defendant Dezarae Fillmyer, when struck by a stray soccer ball during practice. The issue in Dennehy v. East Windsor Regional Board of Education, 2022 N.J. LEXIS 978 (October 26, 2022) was whether the coach’s acts and omissions would be governed by a simple negligence standard or the heightened standard of recklessness (a more difficult standard to prove).
Plaintiff Dennehy was a member of Hightstown High School’s Girls’ field hockey team coached by defendant Fillmyer. On the day of the accident, the afternoon sport’s practices were arranged so that the field hockey team’s practice would begin when the boys’ soccer team’s use of the turf field ended. Coach Fillmyer instructed the offensive players on her field hockey team to begin warming up in “the D-zone,” which was an area between the continuous athletic fields and the turf fields.
A few years earlier, a 20 foot high ball stopper net had been installed at the ends of the turf field to prevent ball interference in other areas. During the field hockey team warmup, at least two soccer balls from the soccer practice landed within the D-zone near the field hockey players. Plaintiff played the position of goalie and had not been participating in the informal activities in the D-zone. She asked her coach if she could take a shot on goal and the coach approved. As Plaintiff was taking a shot, another errant soccer ball cleared the ball stopper and struck the base of her skull, allegedly causing her injuries.
Plaintiff sued Fillmyer, the Board of Education, the school, its athletic director and others. She claimed that her injuries resulted through, among other basis, defendants’ alleged failures to supervise and provide appropriate safeguards and post suitable warnings of potentially dangerous conditions.
After discovery was completed the defendants filed for summary judgment. Plaintiff argued in opposition that defendants owed her a duty of reasonable supervisory care. The trial judge found that the plaintiff was required to show that defendants’ acts or omissions rose at least to the degree of recklessness, as described in prior Supreme Court cases. The trial court judge applied this heightened standard and determined that the allegations could not support a claim of intentional or reckless conduct.
The plaintiff filed an appeal, challenging only the judge’s determination that a recklessness standard applied to her coach’s alleged acts and omissions. The Appellate Division reversed, finding that the prior recklessness standard was inapplicable because the coach was not a co-participant. It held that a simple negligence standard applied because plaintiff’s claim was that Coach Fillmyer failed to properly supervise and oversee the participants of the sport assigned to her for instruction.
The matter was further appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted certification. The Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiff and the Appellate Division. It rejected the defendant Fillmyer’s contention that she was entitled to the application of a recklessness standard (which would be a more difficult standard to meet to pursue a claim for injuries). Instead, the Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiff’s argument that her claims should be governed by a simple negligence standard.
The Court explained that the recklessness standard did not apply because Fillmyer was not actively participating in the recreational activity at issue. Rather, her conduct was “her choice of the location of the impromptu workout prior to the scheduled practice and her failure to supervise her players as they waited their turn on the turf field.”
Defendant Fillmyer argued that the recklessness standard should be extended to apply to the acts and omissions of instructors and coaches like herself regardless of the circumstances. The Supreme Court limited its holding to defendant Fillmyer under the allegations presented by plaintiff. The Supreme Court stated that “we leave for another time the fixing of appropriate standards to govern the myriad ways in which the multi-faceted roles played by coaches and instructors may cause an injury to a participant.”
The Supreme Court noted that the essence of plaintiff’s theory of liability was that Fillmyer chose the wrong place and an unpropitious time to commence practice. The Court noted that “parents have the right to expect that teachers and coaches will exercise reasonable care when in charge of their children and that courts will not immunize a teacher’s negligence by imposing a higher standard of care.”
The Supreme Court, however, did not intimate that a factfinder should find Fillmyer was negligent. It merely held that the recklessness standard did not apply under the circumstances. Hence, the Supreme Court substantially agreed with the Appellate Division’s decision and upheld the reversal of the entry of summary judgment in Fillmyer’s favor.