AS the public continues to process the tragic deaths of Rene and Divine, commentary has poured in from legal experts, armchair analysts, and everyone in between. But outside of our collective outrage, grief and speculation, there is a difficult and necessary question: What does the law actually say about the possible liability of the Ateneo de Manila University, its coaches, staff, employees and other non-student actors involved in this incident?
This is not an argument about whether Ateneo should have been suspended from the coming UAAP season. Nor is it a commentary on the prolonged silence or recent statement of coach Tab Baldwin. It is, instead, an attempt to clarify the legal principles that may apply so that, regardless of where one stands emotionally or morally, we can better understand how accountability is determined and how similar tragedies might be prevented.
Special parental authority
To begin with, the doctrine of in loco parentis, or special parental authority, does not appear to apply here. Under the Family Code, schools, teachers and administrators exercise special parental authority over students while they are under supervision, instruction or custody. But that authority carries direct liability for their own students’ acts or omissions that cause damage to another student or third parties. In this case, Rene and Divine were not the cause of the harm; they were the victims of a tragedy.
That distinction is crucial. In Philippine School of Business Administration v. Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court ruled that a school could not be held liable under in loco parentis when the assailants were not its students, but outsiders. The same reasoning matters here. If the harm was not caused by students, then the legal framework shifts.
Breach of contract
That leads to the more relevant basis for possible liability: breach of contract, or culpa contractual. Why contract? Because a school’s obligation to protect its students is not merely moral; it is embedded in the very nature of the enrollment relationship. A school does not need to sign a separate safety agreement for this duty to exist. The obligation is built into the educational contract itself.
And that duty does not end at the classroom door. If an off-campus activity, training site, or program is part of the school’s educational undertaking, the school’s obligation to provide a reasonably safe environment may extend to the student there.
Again, the Supreme Court has been clear on this point. PSBA v. CA explained that the relationship between a school and its students creates reciprocal obligations. Among them is the institution’s duty to provide a learning environment where students’ lives and safety are not under constant threat. So, while a school may not be liable under in loco parentis for acts committed by outsiders, it may still be liable if it failed in its contractual duty to exercise proper care and maintain adequate safety and security.
Proof of negligence required
But even if that contractual relationship exists, Ateneo cannot be held liable without proof of negligence. In law, negligence is the failure to exercise the degree of care, precaution and vigilance that the circumstances reasonably require.
The classic test comes from Picart v. Smith: Did the defendant exercise the care that an ordinarily prudent person would have used under the same circumstances? If not, negligence may be found.
This standard matters because the law does not require omniscience. Schools are not expected to foresee every possible danger. But they are expected to respond to reasonably foreseeable risks. If a prudent person, faced with the same facts, would have anticipated the possibility of harm and taken precautions, then failing to do so may amount to negligence.
Proximate cause
That said, negligence alone is not enough. The law also requires proof of proximate cause. In other words, there must be a direct and sufficiently close connection between the school’s negligent act or omission and the injury or death that followed. The negligence must not be remote, speculative, or interrupted by some efficient intervening cause. It must be a real legal cause of the harm.
This is where many public discussions go wrong. It is easy to identify a lapse in judgment after the fact. It is much harder, and legally more important, to show that the lapse was one that foreseeably led to the injury in a direct and continuous sequence.
Shift of liability to the resort owner
Another important point is this: Ateneo cannot simply shift responsibility to the resort owners, operators, or other third parties if negligence on their part is also shown. In Saludaga v. FEU, it was held that a school cannot contract away its duty to protect its students. If the activity was part of its program, then it must still prove that it exercised due diligence, regardless of whether the resort owner is negligent or not.
Force majeure
The same principle applies to claims of force majeure or fortuitous event. Schools cannot invoke an act of God as a blanket defense if their own negligence contributed to the injury or death. Once negligence concurs with the event, the occurrence is no longer purely fortuitous in the eyes of the law.
Liability of university officials
As for the liability of Ateneo’s officers, the legal position is more limited. A corporation has a personality separate from its officers. As a rule, corporate officers are not personally liable for corporate acts unless they assented to unlawful acts, acted in bad faith, were grossly negligent, personally undertook solidary liability, or are made personally liable by specific law. Those circumstances must be specifically proven.
The situation may be different, however, for coaches, trainers and supervisory personnel who were physically present and directly responsible for the student-athletes at the time. Their conduct will likely be examined more closely, especially if they exercised immediate supervision and control over the activity.
Schools are not insurers of all risks
In the end, the law does not make schools absolute insurers of student safety. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that educational institutions are not automatically liable for every harm that befalls those in their care. But neither are they free from responsibility when preventable danger is ignored.
That is the legal balance the public must keep in mind. The issue is not whether tragedy alone creates liability. It does not. The issue is whether a duty existed, whether that duty was breached through negligence, and whether that breach directly caused the harm.
If this incident teaches us anything, it is that accountability must rest not on anger or speculation, but on facts, law and a serious commitment to student safety. That is how justice is pursued. And that is how future loss may yet be prevented.
