A new three-part test puts institutional policies and employer oversight under the microscope

New Jersey's highest court just expanded when school districts can be held liable for a teacher's alleged sexual abuse of students.

In a decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that public school districts are not automatically protected from vicarious liability lawsuits when a teacher allegedly abuses a student outside the scope of the teacher's employment. The ruling overturns lower court decisions that had tossed out such claims and lays down a new test that puts institutional oversight front and center.

The decision consolidates four cases involving two New Jersey school districts and allegations from former students who say their teachers sexually abused them as teenagers.

In the first case, plaintiff Russell Forde Hornor alleges that Charles Hutler, a science teacher and Future Farmers of America advisor at Allentown High School, sexually abused him in April 1979 when Hornor was a fifteen-year-old freshman. According to the complaint, Hutler allegedly built a relationship with the student by driving him to his job at a landscaping company and FFA events, taking him and friends to movies and a bowling alley, and supplying him with alcohol. Hornor alleges that after an FFA contest at Rutgers University, Hutler took him to his apartment, sexually assaulted him, and told him not to say anything. He also alleges that school and FFA officials knew or should have known that Hutler...

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