Key Points

  • The Sixth Appellate District affirmed summary judgment for Pajaro Valley Unified School District in a suit over a teacher's 1997 sexual abuse of a teenage boy at her home.
  • The court held the district had no special relationship with, and thus no duty to protect, a district student who was never the teacher's pupil or a student at her school and was abused at her home during summer break.
  • A teacher's deceptive use of her status as a district employee to gain a parent's trust does not create a special relationship, which rests on dependence and control.
  • Education Code section 44808 independently immunized the district because the abuse occurred off school property with no school transportation, school-sponsored activity, or connection to on-campus conduct; Hoyem and Victor Valley were distinguished.
  • The plaintiff forfeited his mandatory-duty claim and a theory raised for the first time in his reply brief.

A California appeals court has held that the Pajaro Valley Unified School District cannot be held liable for a teacher's 1997 sexual abuse of a teenage boy at her home, ruling that the district owed no duty to protect a student who was never in her class or at her school and who was assaulted during summer break.

A three-judge panel of the Sixth Appellate District affirmed summary judgment for the district. Judge Chung, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge sitting by assignment, wrote the opinion, joined by Acting Presiding Justice Grover and Justice Lie. The panel filed the opinion Oct. 16 as unpublished and certified it for publication Nov. 2 at the district's request.

The court rejected the argument that enrollment anywhere in a district creates a duty to protect a student whenever a district teacher harms him. It held that the "special relationship" that can require a school to protect pupils from third parties rests on dependence and control, and that neither existed here. It also held that Education Code section 44808, which limits district liability for students who are off school property, independently barred the suit.

According to the opinion, the plaintiff, identified as M.T., met Candace Mercer, a teacher at Rio Del Mar Elementary School, in the summer between his eighth- and ninth-grade years. He had never attended Rio Del Mar, though his sister had been Mercer's student in 1995-1996. A friend, E.S., also a former Mercer pupil, introduced them and brought M.T. to her home twice that summer.

On one of those visits, after the boys had consumed marijuana and alcohol and the others had gone to sleep, Mercer showed M.T. a pornographic movie and sexually assaulted him, the opinion said. Soon after M.T.'s visits, she was arrested and accused of victimizing seven boys in the district. She pleaded guilty to one felony and two misdemeanors and was sentenced in January 1998 to three years in prison.

M.T. sued the district in Santa Cruz County Superior Court in May 2022, asserting four negligence-based claims and a fifth for breach of a mandatory statutory duty. He contended that Mercer "used her status as a District teacher to trick parents of District students into letting [them] hang out with her so she could groom and abuse them," and that district staff knew or should have known about her parties and sleepovers with students. Superior Court Judge Syda K. Cogliati granted summary judgment on both grounds the district raised.

On appeal, M.T. argued that the district owed him a duty "as a District student," citing his ties to the Rio Del Mar campus, where he sometimes spent time after school. Chung wrote that M.T. had shown no connection between those facts "and any of the hallmarks of dependence and control called for by the case law." M.T. appeared to contend, the court said, that the district "necessarily had some control over his summer vacation and leisure activities," but "he identifies no factual or legal support for this dubious concept."

The panel also rejected M.T.'s argument that Mercer created a duty by presenting herself to his mother as a district teacher and telling her the boys were coming over to do yard work. "Because that relationship is based upon dependence and control—not upon a parent's subjective perceptions of a district employee or a district employee's veneer of trustworthiness and reliability—any deceptive representations by Mercer to M.T.'s mother are ultimately irrelevant," Chung wrote.

M.T. offered no authority, the court said, "for the proposition that a school district employee can somehow manufacture a special relationship out of whole cloth by concocting an excuse to have a district student who is not even her own pupil come over to her house."

Because no special relationship existed, the panel said it did not need to reach the Rowland v. Christian factors, the foreseeability and policy considerations California courts weigh in deciding whether to limit a duty. As a result, M.T.'s arguments about the district's alleged constructive knowledge of Mercer's conduct with male students in her classroom "are not relevant to this appeal," the court wrote. It held forfeited a separate theory, raised for the first time in M.T.'s reply brief, that the district had a special relationship with Mercer that obligated it to control her.

On immunity, the court cited section 44808's provision that a district is not "responsible or in any way liable for the conduct or safety of any pupil of the public schools at any time when such pupil is not on school property," unless it provided transportation, sponsored an off-campus activity or otherwise specifically assumed responsibility. The abuse took place away from school, and no school provided transportation or sponsored an activity, the panel held.

M.T. relied on Hoyem v. Manhattan Beach City School Dist., a 1978 California Supreme Court decision holding that "the off-campus situs of an injury does not ipso facto bar recovery from a school district." In Hoyem, an unsupervised 10-year-old wandered off campus during school hours and was hit by a motorcycle. The panel called that case "readily distinguishable," writing that M.T.'s encounters with Mercer "had nothing to do with the fact that he was a District student and everything to do with the mere fact that he was a friend of E.S., who already knew Mercer."

At oral argument, M.T.'s counsel cited Victor Valley Union High School Dist. v. Superior Court, a 2026 appellate decision issued after briefing closed. The panel distinguished it as well: the plaintiff there was the alleged abuser's student and was escorted from ROTC practice on campus directly to his home. Declining to apply the statute where the injuries "had no connection with anything that occurred on school premises," the court wrote, "would be directly inconsistent with the statutory language."

The panel also held that M.T. forfeited his mandatory-duty claim under Government Code section 815.6 by not arguing it in opposing summary judgment or in his opening brief.

Lawyers for M.T. included Michael Scott Smith of Herman Law. The district was represented by Eric James Bengtson of Davis, Bengtson & Young, APLC.

The order granting summary judgment stands, and the court awarded the district its costs on appeal.