Hemady

INTRODUCTION

Plaintiff and appellant Jane Hemady (plaintiff), a 12-year-old student, was struck in the face with a golf club by another student during a seventh grade physical education golf class. Plaintiff seeks damages for personal injuries from defendants and respondents the Long Beach Unified School District (the District) and the instructor of the middle school golf class, Brian Feely (Feely) (collectively, defendants).

This appeal requires us to determine the applicable standard of care that governs defendants’ potential liability for injuries occurring in a middle school golf class. Under the general rule, persons have a duty to use due care to avoid injury to others, and may be held liable if their failure to use due care injures another person. (Civ. Code, § 1714; Cheong v. Antablin (1997) 16 Cal.4th 1063, 1068 [ 68 Cal.Rptr.2d 859 , 946 P.2d 817 ].) We refer to this as the “prudent person standard of care.”

However, in Knight v. Jewett (1992) 3 Cal.4th 296 [ 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2 , 834 P.2d 696 ] (Knight) and Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist. (2003) 31 Cal.4th 990, 1004 [ 4 Cal.Rptr.3d 103 , 75 P.3d 30 ] (Kahn), the Supreme Court established an exception…