Opinion ID: 1345763
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The origins and scope of our common law of official immunity are unclear.

Text: Curiously, the common law doctrine of official immunity seems to have evolved wholly independent of that of governmental immunity. The criticisms that were made of common law governmental immunity  the irrelevance of its historical rationale tied to the British monarchy, the development of the American tort concept that liability should flow from fault, and the recognition of the social policy that the government is better able to spread the loss  apply equally to official immunity. But our cases abolishing sovereign immunity make no mention of official immunity. See, e.g., Spanel, 264 Minn. 279, 118 N.W.2d 795; Nieting, 306 Minn. 122, 235 N.W.2d 597. Also, when the legislature enacted the State Tort Claims and Municipal Tort Claims Acts, it did not address the question whether the newly created governmental liability was meant to replace or otherwise affect employee liability. Specifically, section 466.02 addresses the tort liability of municipalities (including the vicarious liability of a municipality for the torts of its employees), but does not mention the limits of employee immunity. But the Municipal Tort Claims Act did adopt four provisions that essentially eliminated the policy concerns that underlie official immunity: (1) it established liability limits that also apply to direct claims against public officers and employees (Minn.Stat. § 466.04, subd. 1a (2004)); (2) it required that a notice of claim be given within 180 days after loss or within 1 year for wrongful death (Minn.Stat. § 466.05 (2004)); (3) it authorized the municipality to procure insurance against liability, including that for liability of its officers, employees, and agents (Minn.Stat. § 466.06 (2004)); and (4) it required the municipality to defend and indemnify its officers and employees, subject to certain qualifications (Minn.Stat. § 466.07, subd. 1 (2004)). Yet, despite these protections for government officials, the official immunity doctrine appears to have thrived after 1963. It has been applied to acts that involve operational discretion so long as they are not purely ministerial and so long as the official is not guilty of a willful or malicious wrong. See, e.g., Elwood v. County of Rice, 423 N.W.2d 671, 677-79 (Minn.1988) (applying the official immunity doctrine to trespass and battery claims brought against peace officers well after the Municipal Torts Claim Act was enacted). The policy considerations that underlie official immunity have been seriously questioned. In Dan B. Dobbs, The Law of Torts, the author states: The supposition is that immunity is required in at least some cases to assure that the ardor of public officials for performing their tasks will not be dampened. Courts usually assume that official ardor is desirable. They also assume it can be dampened unduly. The first point is a question of values; the second is a question of data. Neither point is demonstrated in most of the case discussions. The Supreme Court has also suggested that unfounded lawsuits entail social costs, including expenses of litigation and diversion of official energies. That argument, however, seems wide of the mark, since the result of immunity is to avoid the trial that could tell us whether the suit was unfounded or not. Section 273, p. 733 (2000) (footnotes omitted). Yet we have continued to ground official immunity on the fear that personal liability    might deter independent action and impair effective performance of [a public official's] duties. Terwilliger, 561 N.W.2d at 913. And, in fact, we have suggested that the immunity offered to public officials is even broader than that offered to the governmental entity. Holmquist, 425 N.W.2d at 233 n. 1; Pletan, 494 N.W.2d at 41 (Official immunity involves the kind of discretion which is exercised on an operational rather than a policy making level   .). See also Michael K. Jordan, Finding a Useful Path Through the Immunity Thicket, 61-Oct Bench & Bar of Minnesota 24, 28-29 ([C]ommon law official immunity does provide an extra layer of protection for officials who must exercise their discretion in situations where, out of necessity, the application of policy to facts occurs in a myriad of ways and cannot be fully explicated by the legislative or executive branches.). In so doing, we have not addressed the effect of the statutory protections available to public officials. Further, our cases on common law official immunity have not addressed the question of whether there should be an exception, comparable to that available under common law governmental immunity, for dangerous conditions in the road created by the acts of a public employee. It is difficult to imagine a rationale that would support such an exception to governmental immunity but not to official immunity. The discussion thus far would support the suggestion that we should abolish the common law doctrine of official immunity, as we did with common law governmental immunity, or at least recognize an exception to common law official immunity for the creation of a dangerous condition on the roads. Although I would be open to consider that suggestion, the Schroeders do not present it here and our repeated, though unquestioned, application of official immunity after Elwood may make abolition impractical in this case. See, e.g., Terwilliger, 561 N.W.2d at 913; Wiederholt v. City of Minneapolis, 581 N.W.2d 312, 315 (Minn.1998); Gleason v. Metro. Council Transit Operations, 582 N.W.2d 216, 220 (Minn.1998). But, even if we do not abolish official immunity or create an exception to it, this discussion is immediately relevant to the question of whether we should extend official immunity vicariously to the county under these facts. Accordingly, although I concur that, under our present caselaw, Ario is entitled to official immunity on the claims that he negligently graded against traffic (because the decisions to not deadhead and to not place warning signs were within the operational discretion left open by the county's grading policy), I disagree with the majority's conclusion that the county is entitled to vicarious official immunity on those claims.