CM, It is a state supreme court decision. I'm reading the case right now. Basically, it boils down to the fact that the National School Lunch Act, which is the plaintiff's basis for the suit against the state defendants, creates a duty to all students and not a specific subset of students. According to the court document, there are three criteria for a negligence claim: whether a duty to that specific individual existed, breach of that duty, and injury proximately resulting from that breach. The courts have determined based on the plaintiff's pleading that NSLA does not create a duty to the plaintiff's child. Failing to meet that first standard meant the courts were correct to dismiss the appeal.
In reading the court's reading, I understand where they're coming from. They cite one case that uses the example of police officers, which have a duty to protect the general public but not a specific individual; therefore, for example, you could not sue the police department if you were say robbed.
The court decision also goes into how the NSLA statute should be read. The court asserts that the statue simply states that schools must provide alternative lunches not that they must ensure that children with food allergies are not served their allergens. If you read the statue, that's correct. Essentially the court is saying, that the state agencies had an obligation under the law to provide guidance on how to implement NSLA to local school districts and ensure that those school districts implemented the NSLA. The agencies do not, according to the court, have an obligation to ensure that an individual child is served the correct lunch.
Even ADA and 504 wouldn't mandate that the state agencies ensure that a specific child is served the proper lunch.
Take the time to read the opinion. It's interesting. It's also arguing a pretty narrow point of tort law and also arguing that you cannot infer anything from federal regulations that is not expressly written in the statue (with a few very specific exceptions ["(“In interpreting federal statutory law, a
court may look beyond the plain language of a statute when: 1) Congress has expressed a clear intent contrary to the statutory text; 2) literal application would frustrate the purpose of the statute; or 3) literal application would ‘produce an absurd result.’”", which they note in the opinion). Page 17 begins the opnion's discussion of NSLA. The way the part of the statute is written about special dietary needs, Congress did not expressly indicate that state must take action that specific students are not fed their allergen.
8 Although not specifically included in her brief or petition for certiorari, Petitioner
referenced 42 U.S.C. § 1758(a) (2006) during oral argument (and in the intermediate
appellate and trial courts) as establishing a duty owed by the State defendants. That section
reads:
§ 1758. Program requirements
(a) Nutritional requirements
(1) (A) Lunches served by schools participating in the school
lunch program under this chapter [42 U.S.C. §§ 1751-1769]
shall meet minimum nutritional requirements prescribed by the
Secretary on the basis of tested nutritional research, except that
the minimum nutritional requirements –
(i) shall not be construed to prohibit the substitution of
foods to accommodate the medical or other special
dietary needs of individual students; and
(ii) shall, at a minimum, be based on the weekly average
of the nutrient content of school lunches.
As the intermediate appellate court noted in the present case, although this section references
special dietary needs, “it does not mandate that the State take any particular action to ensure
that a child such as Liana is never fed any food containing peanuts.” Pace, 195 Md. App.
at 43, 5 A.3d at 1127. We agree with that analysis.
Topic: Ruling: Md. need not protect pupils from allergens in school lunch (Read 8236 times)
