Background
Shayne Withers sued Byron Community Unit School District 226 and several school employees, alleging that they willfully and wantonly failed to supervise his classmate and football teammate Richard Messling and protect Withers from bullying and hazing. The complaint described 12 incidents occurring between September 2015 and November 2018, including an October 2018 team initiation known as the “cookie run” and a November 23, 2018, incident aboard a charter bus returning from the state football championship.
During the bus trip, Withers fell asleep near the back of the dimly lit bus. He later learned that Messling had placed his genitalia on Withers’s face while another player allegedly recorded the incident. Withers did not report it to the coaches at the time but contacted police the next day. The circuit court granted summary judgment to the district and its staff, ruling that all claims except the bus-incident claim were untimely and that governmental immunity barred the remaining claim.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate court affirmed. Under the Tort Immunity Act’s one-year limitations period, Withers had one year after turning 18 to sue over incidents occurring while he was a minor and one year from accrual to sue over later incidents. His November 21, 2019, complaint was therefore untimely as to every incident except the November 23, 2018, bus incident. The continuing-tort rule did not preserve the earlier claims because the 12 incidents were spread across four years and involved different actors and dissimilar injuries rather than continuous, similar conduct by the same actor.
As to the bus incident, section 2-201 immunized the individual school employees because assigning players and coaches to buses, establishing bus-conduct rules, determining seating practices, and implementing those policies involved both policy determinations and discretionary judgment. Section 2-109 consequently gave the school district derivative immunity because its employees were not liable. The court further held that section 3-108(a), governing supervision of activities on public property, did not apply because the privately owned charter bus was not public property and the required nexus between the school defendants and the site of the injury was absent.
Key Takeaways
- A minor suing an Illinois local public entity or its employees generally has one year after turning 18 to bring claims that accrued during minority.
- Separate incidents involving different participants and different kinds of harm do not constitute a continuing tort merely because they are characterized collectively as bullying or hazing.
- Section 2-201 protected the school employees’ discretionary policy decisions, while section 2-109 separately protected the district through derivative immunity.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes discretionary school transportation and supervision decisions from the ministerial execution of those decisions. It also underscores that a willful-and-wanton supervision theory does not itself defeat section 2-201 immunity when the challenged conduct consists of policy determinations carried out through discretionary judgment.
The order also limits section 3-108(a) to supervision connected to public property. A school-sponsored activity does not bring a privately owned charter bus within that provision merely because school employees supervise students aboard it.