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GAZETTE
JULY/AUGIJST 1984
event. The shot had been thrown by another girl, who was
aged 15, in the course of a competitive game of "putting
the shot". Four girls were competing in the game which
was being held for the purpose of selecting two of them to
represent the school. Other events were being run in the
school's sporting complex at the same time for the same
reason.
After the first round had been completed, the physical
education teacher instructed the girls to continue on in
order and to mark down their distances with numbered
pegs while she went to another part of the field to organise
the girls' long jump. She would return some minutes later
to take the final measurements.
When the teacher had left, the girls carried on with their
throws. While the plaintiff and another girl were
measuring the distance of a third girl's throw, the 15-year-
old girl took her turn and struck the plaintiff on the
head.
13
The plaintiff sued the physical education teacher and
the school management for negligence. In his charge to
the jury, Mr. Justice O'Hanlon said the issues in the case
boiled down to a lack of supervision or nothing. "Here
was an irresponsible action by a child of 15 and should the
teacher have foreseen that one of the four children
participating in 'putting the shot' would have so
behaved?"
14
Two questions were put to the jury: (1)
whether the school had been negligent in failing to
provide supervision that was adequate to the occasion;
and (2) whether the school had been negligent in failing to
provide a safe system for the conduct of the event. The
jury answered "no" to both questions.
It is useful to look at some English decisions on this
general question, bearing in mind the differences that
inevitably flow from the absence ofjuries in some of these
cases.
In
Gibbs
-v-
Barking Corporation
15
liability was
imposed where a boy who was required to vault over a
horse landed "in a stumble" and was injured. It appears
that the master in charge "did nothing to assist the boy in
landing'"
6
. In upholding the decree against the school
authorities Slesser L.J., in the Court of Appeal, said:
"The games' master does not seem to have acted
with the promptitude which the law requires.'"
7
In contrast, in
Wright
-v-
Cheshire County Council
18
, no
liability was imposed where the plaintiff was injured when
vaulting because a fellow-student whose task it was to
steady him after vaulting ran off when the school bell
rang. The Court of Appeal stressed the fact that it was the
approved procedure in schools to leave boys who had a
little practice themselves to carry out the exercise by
themselves, so as to encourage self-reliance. Morris L.J.
considered that the school's obligation to take care did
not mean:
"That the adopted system should have to be such
that in no foreseeable circumstance or situation
could there be any possible or conceivable
contingency of some slight mishap. If that were so,
the activities of the young would be unduly circum-
scribed and only inactivity and inanition could be
planned.'"
9
In
Cahill
-v-
West Ham Corporation
20
, a master
organised a relay race in one of the classrooms. When the
plaintiff, who took part in the race, reached the end of the
room, his arm went through a glass partition and was
severely cut.
The plaintiffs action for negligence was based on the
unsuitability of the classroom for races of this kind, since
the room was surrounded by glass partitions and the floor
was slippery. The school's defence was that the rule of the
race was that the boys should touch the master, not the
glass partition. The plaintiff denied this, saying that he
had been "told to run down the hall, touch what was in
front of him, and run back".
The short report of the case states that Mr. Justice
Porter, rejecting the claim, said that, even if the facts had
been as stated by the plaintiff, he would have held that
there was no negligence. "It might have been otherwise if
they had been told to touch the glass."
21
This case may be contrasted with
Ralph
-v-
L.C.C.
22
Again a schoolboy was injured by putting his hand
through a glass partition when playing an organised game
within the school building. The Court of Appeal upheld
the imposition of liability at trial. It is only fair to note
that, in contrast to
Cahill's
case, the game was of a chasing
variety, involving more random movements by the boys,
who would be "slipping and sliding about all over the
place."
23
It is interesting to compare the rather harsh decision of
Jones
-v-
L.C.C}
4
,
where no liability was imposed when
a child, ordered to play an organised strenuous
competitive game called "raider and horses", fell on a
floor which had no matting. Mr. Justice Avory, evincing
little sympathy for the plaintiffs case, considered that:
"if there had been matting it would have been said
that there ought to have been a mattress; and if there
had been a mattress it would have been said there
ought to have been a feather-bed; and if there had
been a feather bed, that the boys ought to have been
wrapped up in cotton wool or rubber."
25
In Canada the general thrust of the decisions
26
is
against imposing too stringent a duty on the school
authorities in relation to gymnastic education, but the
decision of
Myers
-v-
Peel County Board of Education
11
in
1981 shows how difficult it is to predict the outcome of
these cases. The plaintiff, a fifteen-year-old boy, was
injured when attempting to dismount from rings in a gym
class. At the time he was one of a small group of
unsupervised students. This was the first time he had
attempted the manoeuvre. His friend, who had been
allocated the task of steadying him when he came off the
ring, had moved away just as he was about to dismount.
The plaintiff in his action against the school authorities
pleaded that there had been a negligent lack of
supervision and that the mats supplied were too thin. He
won his action at trial; the Ontario Court of Appeal by a
majority reversed but the Supreme Court of Canada
unanimously restored the verdict in his favour.
Allegations of negligence in relation to instructions
have been made outside the context of sports and
gymnastic injuries.
In
James
-v-
River East School Division
28
, the plaintiff,
an eighteen-year-old "above average student", was
injured when nitric acid, which she was heating in the
course of a laboratory experiment, spattered onto her
face. Liability was imposed on the school. The
instructions for the experiment had not referred to the
necessity of wearing goggles. Deniset J. stated:
"Goggles were available. None were recommended
on this occasion by the teacher . . . His excuse that
the students knew about the goggles and that none
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