In a first-of-its-kind case, a Texas high school administrator allegedly defamed by two students on a MySpace page is arguing that parents have a duty to supervise their child's Internet access so it is not used for “illicit purposes.”

Anna Draker's suit would apply the doctrine of negligent supervision to cyberspace for the first time, making parents responsible for a child's harmful use of the Internet in much the same way that they can be held liable for a child's harmful use of a firearm or automobile.

Draker, an assistant principal at Tom C. Clark High School in San Antonio, claims students Benjamin Schreiber and Ryan Todd created a MySpace page which used her name and picture and defamed her by, among other things, falsely identifying her as a lesbian.

“Allowing access to the Internet, unsupervised and without restraint, poses an obvious and unreasonable danger that such children would utilize the Internet for illicit purposes,” the complaint, filed in Medina County District Court, says.

The page apparently was the students' way of avenging themselves on Draker, who had disciplined Todd in the past. “It's not like somebody called Anna Draker a name,” her attorney, Murphy Klasing, told the San Antonio Express News. “This was four pages of filth.”

Teachers don't often sue their students for defamation, of course. But Draker takes an even bigger legal leap by suing the parents of her alleged tormentors for negligent supervision.

Parents have been held liable for the intentional torts of a minor child when they knew the child had a “dangerous proclivity” and failed to exercise reasonable care in controlling that proclivity. The Kentucky Court of Appeals recently ruled that

The existence of a parent’s duty to control a minor child largely turns on the foreseeability of the child’s injurious conduct. Hugenberg v. West American Insurance Co.

In Draker's case, the plaintiff addresses foreseeability by alleging that

Due to numerous problems with discipline at Clark High School regarding Ryan and Benjamin, both sets of parents were on notice that their children had tendencies to act out in an inappropriate manner and certainly had notice of their feeling of anger towards Ms. Draker.

But case law suggests that allegation is too general for Draker to proceed on a negligent supervision claim.

In Barrett v. Pacheco, 815 P.2d 834 (1991), the Washington state Court of Appeals said, “[T]he child's dangerous proclivity must be of the same or similar nature as the ultimate tort or crime which injures the victim.” Draker does not allege that Schreiber and Todd had any dangerous tendency to use the Internet for illicit purposes.

By Matthew Heller
10/3/06