OPINION
Appellant-plaintiff Heather A. Ashcraft (“Ashcraft”) appeals from the trial court’s order granting summary judgments in favor of appellee-defendant Northeast Sullivan County School Corp. (“the School”) and ap-pellee-defendant Town & County Mutual Insurance Company (“Town & Country”). The facts most favorable to the nonmovant are set forth below.
On June 12, 1993, Ashcraft, a member of the North Cеntral (Sullivan) High School cheer squad, was participating in a fundrais-ing event in the parking lot of Angell’s Food Center (“Angell’s”) in Sullivan. Members of the squad offered to wash the car windows of shoppers parked in the parking lot, in exchange for a donation, which would be used to buy new cheer squad uniforms. Jeri Justice, the School’s eheerleading coach (“Cоach Justice”), was present at the fundraiser, ostensibly to organize and supervise the event.
Angell’s is situated at the top of an incline, and its parking lot is in front of the store, also at the top of the incline. The cheer squad members were grouped at the bottom of the incline. There, Ashcraft approached a woman shopper, offered to wash her car windows, and upon the woman’s assent, began to do so. While she was washing the rear windows of the car, she saw, out of the comer of her eye, a car approaching. She assumed the approaching ear was being navigated to park in the empty parking space next to the car she was washing, and so shе positioned herself close to the car she was washing in order to clear the path for the parking car. Unfortunately, the approaching car was in fact unattended, and struck the car Ashcraft was washing, pinning her in between the two cars and badly injuring her right leg.
The car, a 1973 Chrysler, belonged to Gerald Richardson (“Richardson”), who had purchased it approximately three weeks earlier. Neither at the time of purchase nor during the subsequent weeks had Richardson been told of or experienced any problems with the car’s automatic transmission, nor had he experienced any problems or been advised of any problems with the car’s braking mechanism. He had pulled into Angell’s parking lot, parked the car on a slant, such that the rear end of the vehicle was lower than the front end, placed the vehicle in “park,” turned it off, and taken the keys with him *1103 into the store. Approximately five or ten minutes later, while in the store, Richardson was told of the accident in the parking lot; he went outside and found that his vehicle had rolled backwards out of the spot where he had left it and into Ashcraft and the vehicle she was washing. He saw that approximately four men were pushing the car back to its original parking spot; howéver, when police officers who came to the scene checked the car after the accident, the transmission selector was in “park.”
Ashсraft brought a negligence suit against Richardson and the School, alleging negligence on Richardson’s part, as well as negligence on the part of the School for its failure to properly supervise and maintain the safety of the students during the fundraiser. Her action against Town & Country was initiated to recover under the underinsured motorist provision of Ashcraft’s own insurance policy; Ashcraft also alleged Town & Country acted in bad faith by deliberately refusing to pay her claim. 1 Richardson was dismissed with prejudice after he and Ashcraft entered into a compromised settlement of claims. Mediation between the remaining parties was held on December 6, 1996, but did not result in settlement. After a hearing, the Sullivan Circuit Court granted both defendants’ motions for summary judgment, and Ashcraft appeals.
When reviewing a decision on a summary judgment motion, this court applies the same standard as the trial court.
Goldsberry v. Grubbs,
Ashcraft’s claim against the School sounds in negligence, a tort consisting of three elements: 1) a duty owed to the plaintiff by the defendant; 2) a breach of that duty by the defendant; and 3) injury to the plaintiff proximately causеd by that breach.
Wickey,
The question of whether Justice and/or the School owed a duty of reasonable care to Ashcraft was the focus of much of the School’s argument against liability at the summary judgment stage of the proceedings below. The School argues, correctly, that absent the finding of a duty, there can be no breach, and thus no recovery under the theory of negligence.
Hawn v. Padgett,
This particular line of reasoning is not persuasive, because, as Ashcraft correctly asserts, even in negligence cases where summary judgments in favor of school corpоrations have been affirmed, Indiana has clearly recognized that there exists a duty on the part of school personnel to exercise ordinary and reasonable care for the safety of the children under their authority.
Beckett v. Clinton Prairie School Corp.,
It would be a radical departure from relevant supreme court precedent to engage in a Webb v. Jarvis analysis and hold that the School owed Ashcraft no duty of care at all. As our court’s Judge Rucker has noted,
[essentially, where relevant case authority dictates the existence of a duty then we may not, by examining the relationship between the parties, foreseeability of harm, and public policy concerns, reach a сontrary conclusion and determine that no duty exists. In short, balancing the Webb competing factors is reserved for instances where the existence of a duty has not been previously determined or articulated.
Ellis v. Luxbury Hotels, Inc.,
The standard of care imposed by Indiana courts in cases involving an alleged breach of a school’s duty toward its students is that level of care that an ordinary prudent person would exercise under the circumstances.
Norman,
We acknowledge that our court has held that summary judgment is especially inappropriate where the .critical question for resolution is whether a defendant exercised the requisite degree of care under the factual circumstances.
Randolph Co. Hospital v. Livingston,
In an action for negligence the court determines
(c) the standard of conduct required of the defendant by his legal duty;
(d) whether the defendant has conformed to that standard, in any case in which the jury may not reasonably come to a different conclusion; ....
Restatement, Second, Torts § 328 B (1965),
emphasis added.
Accordingly, as noted above, it is possible to prevail on a motion for summary judgment by establishing that undisputed material facts negate at least one element of the plaintiffs claim.
Goldsberry,
We are guided by the aforementioned Indiana Supreme Court decision in
Norman,
which involved a negligence claim against a school brought on behalf of a seven-year-old second grade student who was injured when she collided with a six-year-old first grade student during recess on the school’s playground. In addition to standing for the proposition, cited above, that the State recognizes a duty on the part of school personnel to exercise ordinary and reasonable care for the safety of the children under their authority, the case also nonetheless affirmed the trial court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of the school. The Court of Appeals had ruled that the evidence presented inferences that two of the several teachers assigned to watch the children at the recess period “were inattentive either in failing to observe the students or in failing to warn them after they observed the dangerous situation developing.”
under no set of facts presented to the jury could it be said that a duty arose on any of the teachers or all of them to pay particular attention to a particular student who was running.... Even perfect attention to this incident might not have prevented it. To hold the school personnel liable under the set of facts presented here would require them to be insurers of the safety of children in their care....
Accordingly, we are brought to a discussion of the third element of any negligence action, that of proximate cause. If it is assumed,
arguendo,
that Justice breached the School’s duty of reasonаble care, Ash-craft must still prove that her injury was proximately caused by that breach. “A party’s act is the proximate cause of an injury if it is the natural and probable consequence of the act and should have been reasonably foreseen and anticipated in light of the circumstances.”
Fast Eddie’s v. Hall,
Aсcordingly, while we acknowledge that the exact manner in which an injury occurred is not dispositive of its foreseeabil *1106 ity, we cannot agree with Ashcraft’s general assertions, such as, “that cars on the lot, ..., might pose a danger to the girls without basic precautionary measures being taken and absent the close supervision of a school official, is foreseeable,” (Appellant’s Brief, at 20-21), and “[without posting signs or otherwise making [drivers in the lot] aware of the students present, the girls were subject to being harmed by an automobile.” Id. The girls, including Ashcraft, were subject to being harmed by an automobile every day, whether they were at their high school to attend a cheer squad practice, or аt a grocery such as Angell’s, with their parents or having driven themselves there. Ashcraft has failed to make the causal link between Justice’s alleged negligence in not making signs or “blocking off’ an area and Richardson’s parking his car where he did, and its subsequent unexplained rolling into Ashcraft, which is clearly and undisputedly the cause in fact of her injury. We find a jury cоuld not reasonably come to a different conclusion as to the proximate and actual cause of Ash-craft’s injury, and so the summary judgment in favor of the School is affirmed.
We turn now to the issue of the appropriateness of summary judgment in favor of Appellee Town & Country. Whether Town & Country can be held liable for Ashcraft’s injury depends upon whether Richardson, as an underinsured motorist, was negligent.
We have set forth and discussed at some length above the elements of the tort of negligence, as well as the axiom that absent the finding of a duty, there can be no breach, and thus no recovery under the theory of negligence.
Hawn v. Padgett,
Arguing that Richardson, as the operator of a motor vehicle, owed a general, common law duty “to all foreseeable victims that may be harmed by the operation of his vehicle,” Ashcraft points to' Ind.Code § 9-19-3-1, which provides that all motor vehicles (other than motorcycles) must be equipped with two separate brake mechanisms, “so that failure of one (1) part of the operating mechanism does not leave the motor vehicle without brakes on at least two wheels.” Her argument is that although Richardson was in compliance with the statute insofar as his car had an emergency hand brake, there is a fact question as to whether his opting not to set the hand brake in this instance constituted a breach of his general duty of care. Town & Country argues that Indiаna does not recognize a driver’s duty to set his emergency brake each time he parks his vehicle, and that we should not establish such a duty as a matter of law.
As noted above, the existence of a duty is a question of law for the court to determine.
Webb v. Jarvis,
Affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded.
Notes
. The trial court'granted partial summary judgment in favor of Town & Country as to Ashcraft’s claim of bad faith, and Ashcraft did not contest that judgment; thus, the issue of Town & Country’s bad faith vet non is not before us on appeal.