15 years are not exempt from liability: The Supreme Court takes a fresh look at the fights

The trial in the Tula region passed the stages of three courts of different instances before the case went to the Supreme Court. Details of the story are deliberately not disclosed. It is known that this is a regular school fight, the instigator of which at the time of the incident was 15 years old. The Sun made it clear that one cannot only refer to the fact that the student who hit another is “already big” and over 14. The deciding factor is whether or not an adult was with him. Where was the teacher?

The mother of the victim filed a lawsuit and demanded compensation from the school for moral damage. The woman believes that the school did not provide children with safe conditions and did not prevent the conflict. Three junior courts refused. The logic of the judges was that the school could be responsible for the harm caused by children under 14 years of age. And since the instigator of the fight is already 15, it means that the parents are responsible, not the educational institution.

The higher court overturned the decisions of the lower courts and sent the case for a new hearing. The Supreme Court, appealing to the law “On Education”, drew attention to an important circumstance: at the time of the fight, the schoolchildren were without supervision of school employees. None of the officers intervened or tried to stop the conflict. Therefore, it is impossible to assess the situation only by the age of the attacker. It is necessary to check whether the school has fulfilled its duty to monitor children and ensure safety.

But the monetary compensation of the mother of the Armed Forces has not yet been appointed, but only canceled previous decisions and returned the case to court. At the new meeting, it is necessary to understand whether the school violated its duties, whether the violation is due to the fact that the child was injured. However, the age of the instigator - 15 years - does not automatically save the school.

- The duty of supervision is directly related to the norms of the Federal Law “On Education”, comments lawyer Stanislav Popov. - According to art. 28 hours 6, the school is entrusted with the responsibility to create safe conditions for training, education, as well as supervision and care for students. According to Art. 28 paragraph 7, the educational organization is responsible for the life and health of students during the educational process. Article 41 refers the safety of students during their stay in school to the protection of health.

In addition, as is known from the court materials, the Supreme Court in its decision relied on the Resolution of the Plenum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of January 26, 2010 No. 1 (paragraph 14). If the child was temporarily under the supervision of an educational organization, it is obliged to compensate for the harm, if it does not prove its occurrence through no fault of its own during the supervision. Therefore, it was the inaction of the school (lack of control on the part of employees) that became a fact that made it possible to raise the question of its fault. If this fact is proved, further charges of negligence, non-performance of duties for school employees may follow. For the school it can be a fine, for the teacher, the headmaster and his deputies – administrative responsibility.

- Is there a difference for the court whether the teacher saw or did not see the fight? Or even, on rare occasions, if he was involved?

- Of course I do. If the teacher did not see anything, it is an improper organization of supervision by the school as an institution. The teacher may be in a different lesson, in a different wing of the building, or simply not physically able to see what is happening. If he saw and did not intervene, then this is direct inaction in the performance of duties. And entails for the teacher not only disciplinary, but also, probably, criminal liability. The Investigative Committee in our country often initiates such cases, when teachers “considered the conflict as an ordinary case” and did not take action. The teacher is almost guaranteed to be severely reprimanded by the results of an internal audit.

In the hypothetical case, if a teacher provoked a fight, his actions go beyond his work duties and fall under the Criminal Code directly. If provoked verbally or by his behavior, his actions can be qualified under Art. 156 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Failure to perform duties for the upbringing of a minor"), especially if this is combined with ill-treatment. But it is also possible to qualify under Art. 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (negligence), if it is proved that the provocation was a form of improper performance of duties.

In any case, in this form of evidence, the school will be held liable for harm caused by its employee in the performance of work duties. Parents of the victim will be able to recover compensation from the educational institution. But in such cases, we rarely receive large sums. For example, in Vladivostok, the mother of an injured student recently won the court, having managed to prove the fact of bullying in the classroom. She was awarded 80,000 non-pecuniary damages and 15,000 court costs, the amount paid by the school.

In cases of banal school hooliganism, and after all, schoolboys can push, kick or hit someone simply because of excess energy, a collision occurs. On the one hand, teachers are also people, they need to eat during the day, drink tea, excuse me, go to the toilet. And everyone knows about the problems with staff at school. On the other hand, the consequences of just running and pushing can be very serious. When the author was in school, our classmate was accidentally pushed astray by running boys. The girl was small and fragile, swooped her back on the valve in a cast-iron battery. Bottom line: ruptured ovaries, she couldn't have children.

Here is the chronicle of a new time in a few years. Krasnoyarsk, in school No. 72, a 4th grade student attacked a child and poked him in the eye with an unidentified object. The consequences were severe: the boy developed a cataract and lost his eye. A similar case in Yakutia, where in the yard of a school children found a sheet of glass and threw it on the ground. A 10-year-old student lost an eye. Similar cases in the Kemerovo region and Kamchatka, there is something not divided in the school canteen of a 15-year-old. The result is the same - as a result of an accidental injury, they were left without one eye.

November, Yanao. Because of the long-standing conflict right in history class, a 16-year-old hit his opponent in the face with his palm, lifted him and threw him upside down on the floor. The diagnosis is severe traumatic brain injury, fracture of the temporal and parietal bones, extensive hemorrhage, two hematomas. Even after 7 months of recovery, surgery will be performed to replace the bones of the skull, it is likely that the teenager will remain disabled.

Moscow. On the stairs at the school grabbed 14-year-old and 13-year-olds. The boys were friends and had a fight "just like that." The youngest of them, trying to pull out his hand and not calculating his strength, hit a friend in the groin. Diagnosis - "swelling syndrome of the scrotum on the right", required urgent surgery. The mother of the victim appealed to the court: fearing that because of the injury, the teenager in the future will not be able to have children, she decided to do cryopreservation of sperm. The court recovered from the parents of the offender 22 thousand rubles, and from school — 11 thousand rubles.