Title: Commonwealth v. Burns

State: virginia

Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court

Document:

Present:  All the Justices 
 
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, ET AL. 
OPINION BY CHIEF JUSTICE LEROY R. HASSELL, SR. 
v.  Record No. 060774 
 January 12, 2007 
 
KAREN BURNS, ET AL. 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF CAMPBELL COUNTY 
J. Samuel Johnston, Jr., Judge 
 
 
In this interlocutory appeal, filed pursuant to Code 
§ 8.01-670.1, we consider whether plaintiff's claims for 
negligence and gross negligence against an employee of the 
Virginia Department of Transportation and the Commonwealth of 
Virginia are barred by the public duty doctrine. 
 
Plaintiff, Karen C. Burns, administrator of the estate of 
Dennis E. Burns, filed her motion for judgment against the 
Commonwealth of Virginia, the Virginia Department of 
Transportation, and William D. Wright.  Plaintiff alleged in 
her motion that the defendants were guilty of simple and gross 
negligence in the performance of maintenance work on a public 
highway in the Commonwealth and that her husband died as a 
result of their acts and omissions. 
 
The defendants filed a demurrer, asserting that they are 
immune from the claims pursuant to the doctrine of sovereign 
immunity, that the plaintiff's claims against the Commonwealth 
are limited to $100,000 pursuant to the terms of the Virginia 
 
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Tort Claims Act, and that the public duty doctrine bars the 
claims against Wright. 
 
The circuit court permitted Cincinnati Insurance 
Companies to intervene in this proceeding.  The insurance 
company had made worker's compensation payments to the 
decedent's estate as required by Virginia's workers' 
compensation statutes, and the insurer has a lien on any 
wrongful death proceeds collected by the decedent's estate. 
 
The circuit court dismissed the Virginia Department of 
Transportation from this proceeding.  The circuit court held 
that the public duty doctrine did not bar the plaintiff's 
claims against the defendants and, therefore, denied the 
remaining portions of the demurrer. 
 
We granted the litigants an interlocutory appeal limited 
to the issue whether the public duty doctrine bars plaintiff's 
claims against the defendants.  In our resolution of this 
issue, we will rely upon the material facts and inferences 
from those facts set forth in plaintiff's motion for judgment.  
Fuste v. Riverside Healthcare Ass'n, 265 Va. 127, 130, 575 
S.E.2d 858, 860 (2003); McMillion v. Dryvit Systems, Inc., 262 
Va. 463, 465, 552 S.E.2d 364, 365 (2001). 
 
On April 14, 2003, a Virginia Department of 
Transportation work crew was engaged in maintenance work in 
Campbell County on U.S. Route 460.  William D. Wright, an 
 
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employee of the Virginia Department of Transportation, 
supervised the crew. 
 
While performing maintenance work on Route 460, the crew 
created "a trench" approximately two inches below the adjacent 
road service.  The trench was 108 feet long and "approximately 
three feet wide in the left portion of the right-hand 
westbound lane of Route 460 in an area not lighted by street 
lights."  The crew ceased its work that evening, but did not 
place barricades or otherwise prevent access to that portion 
of the highway containing the trench.  The crew failed to 
place lights in the area or take "reasonable and appropriate 
steps to warn members of the traveling public of the nature, 
location and existence of [the] trench [in order] to give them 
an opportunity to avoid encountering [the trench] while 
traveling on the highway." 
 
Approximately 11:29 p.m. that evening, Dennis E. Burns 
operated a motorcycle on U.S. Route 460.  While operating the 
motorcycle in the left-hand portion of the right westbound 
lane of the highway, he drove into the trench and lost control 
of the motorcycle.  He died as a result of injuries he 
sustained. 
 
The public duty doctrine has been described as follows: 
"[I]f the duty which the official authority imposes 
upon an officer is a duty to the public, a failure 
to perform it, or an inadequate or erroneous 
 
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performance, must be a public, not an individual 
injury, and must be addressed, if at all, in some 
form of public prosecution.  On the other hand, if 
the duty is a duty to the individual, then a neglect 
to perform it, or to perform it properly, is an 
individual wrong, and may support an individual 
action for damages." 
 
2 Thomas M. Cooley, A Treatise on the Law of Torts or the 
Wrongs Which Arise Independently of Contract § 300 (D. Avery 
Haggard ed., 4th ed. 1932). 
 
The Commonwealth and Wright, relying upon our decisions 
in Marshall v. Winston, 239 Va. 315, 389 S.E.2d 902 (1990), 
and Burdette v. Marks, 244 Va. 309, 421 S.E.2d 419 (1992), 
argue that plaintiff's claims against Wright are barred by the 
public duty doctrine.  We disagree.  This Court has only 
applied the public duty doctrine in cases when a public 
official owed a duty to control the behavior of a third party, 
and the third party committed acts of assaultive criminal 
behavior upon another. 
 
In Marshall, we considered whether a sheriff and a jailer 
owed a special duty of care to protect a member of the general 
public from harm by a third person.  Lois Marshall, 
administrator of her husband's estate, filed an action against 
the sheriff of the City of Richmond and the chief jailer of 
the City's jail for the wrongful death of her husband.  Her 
husband was murdered by an inmate who was negligently released 
from the jail before the expiration of his sentence. 
 
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Rejecting the plaintiff's claims, we held that these 
defendants did not owe a duty to the plaintiff.  Applying the 
public duty doctrine in Marshall, we stated: 
" '[T]here is no such thing as negligence in 
the abstract, or in general. . . .  Negligence must 
be in relation to some person.'  Kent v. Miller, 167 
Va. 422, 425-26, 189 S.E. 332, 334 (1937); see 
generally Prosser and Keeton on The Law of Torts 
§ 53 (5th ed. 1984).  Thus, in negligence claims 
against a public official, a distinction must be 
drawn between a public duty owed by the official to 
the citizenry at large and a special duty owed to a 
specific identifiable person or class of 
persons. . . .  Only a violation of the latter duty 
will give rise to civil liability of the 
official. . . .  To hold a public official civilly 
liable for violating a duty owed to the public at 
large would subject the official to potential 
liability for every action he undertook and would 
not be in society's best interest." 
 
239 Va. at 319, 389 S.E.2d at 905 (citations omitted). 
 
We also discussed the public duty doctrine in Burdette.  
In that case, we considered whether a plaintiff alleged 
sufficient facts to establish that a deputy sheriff owed a 
duty to the plaintiff to protect him from the acts of a third 
party.  James C. Burdette observed Gary D. Hungerford attack a 
woman and seriously injure her.  When Burdette intervened to 
assist the woman, Hungerford attacked Burdette and began to 
beat him with a shovel.  Eventually, Arty Marks, a deputy 
sheriff in Westmoreland County arrived upon the scene, and 
even though he witnessed the attacks, he failed to intervene 
 
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to protect Burdette from Hungerford's attack.  244 Va. at 310-
11, 421 S.E.2d at 419-20. 
 
We held in Burdette that generally a person has no duty 
to control the conduct of third persons in order to prevent 
physical harm, but that the general rule does not apply when a 
special relationship exists "(1) between the defendant and the 
third person which imposes a duty upon the defendant to 
control the third person's conduct, or (2) between the 
defendant and the plaintiff which gives a right to protection 
to the plaintiff."  Id. at 311-12, 421 S.E.2d at 420. 
 
In Burdette, we held that the public duty doctrine did 
not bar the plaintiff's claim against deputy sheriff Marks 
because he was on duty as a deputy sheriff at the time of the 
attacks, and Marks knew or should have known that the 
plaintiff was in great danger of serious bodily harm.  Id. at 
312-13, 421 S.E.2d at 421. 
 
We decline the defendants' invitation to extend the 
public duty doctrine.  We hold that the expansion of the 
public duty doctrine is unnecessary because Virginia's 
sovereign immunity doctrine provides sufficient protection to 
these employees in the discharge of their public duties.  See, 
e.g., Niese v. City of Alexandria, 264 Va. 230, 240, 564 
S.E.2d 127, 133 (2002); City of Virginia Beach v. Carmichael 
Dev. Co., 259 Va. 493, 499, 527 S.E.2d 778, 781-82 (2000); 
 
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Stanfield v. Peregoy, 245 Va. 339, 429 S.E.2d 11 (1993); 
Messina v. Burden, 228 Va. 301, 307-08, 321 S.E.2d 657, 660 
(1984). 
 
For the foregoing reasons, we hold that the public duty 
doctrine does not bar a claim of negligence or gross 
negligence against employees of the Virginia Department of 
Transportation under the facts and circumstances in this case.  
Accordingly, the order of the circuit court is affirmed and 
the case is remanded for further proceedings. 
Affirmed and remanded.