Opinion ID: 1034411
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the history of governmental immunity

Text: ¶104 To better understand our current governmental immunity quagmire, it will be helpful to briefly survey the historical development of the doctrine. The concept of governmental immunity goes back to the 18th-century English common law notion that the king could do no wrong, Linda M. Annoye, Comment, Revising Wisconsin's Government Immunity Doctrine, 88 Marq. L. Rev. 971, 973-74 (2005). Or, as Sir William Blackstone put it, The king . . . is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong. 1 Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England 187 (Wayne Morrison ed., Cavendish Publishing Limited 2001). The first known case to apply this concept was Russell v. The Men of Devon, (1788) 100 Eng. Rep. 359 (K.B.), in which the Court of King's Bench in England held that an unincorporated county was not liable for damages caused by a faulty bridge. In setting forth the court's ruling, Justice Ashhurst reasoned that 2 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg it is better that an individual should sustain an injury than that the public should suffer an inconvenience. Id. at 362. Governmental immunity eventually migrated to the United States, first landing in Massachusetts with Mower v. Leicester, 9 Mass. 247 (1812). Wisconsin subsequently adopted the doctrine in Hayes v. City of Oshkosh, 33 Wis. 314 (1873). There, we utilized reasoning similar to Russell, stating that [i]ndividual hardship or loss must sometimes be endured in order that still greater hardship or loss to the public at large or the community may be averted. Hayes, 33 Wis. at 319. ¶105 In 1962 this court abrogated the longstanding common law rule of governmental immunity in Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 33, noting, [t]here are probably few tenets of American jurisprudence which have been so unanimously berated as the governmental immunity doctrine. That decision reversed the relationship between injured plaintiffs and government tortfeasors, as we held that henceforward, so far as governmental responsibility for torts is concerned, the rule is liability——the exception is immunity. Id. at 39. However, we qualified this sea change in the law by cautioning that liability should not attach to a governmental body when it exercises its legislative or judicial or quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions. Id. at 40 (citation omitted). We also said that [i]f the legislature deems it better public policy, it is, of course, free to reinstate immunity. Id. As the majority opinion observes, the year after Holytz was decided, the legislature enacted an immunity statute that 3 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg closely tracked some of our language from that decision, thereby codifying the elimination of blanket governmental immunity. Majority op., ¶47; see also Ch. 198, Laws of 1963. The current version of the immunity statute provides that no suit may be brought against any political corporation, governmental subdivision or any agency thereof or its officers, officials, agents or employees for intentional torts or acts done in the exercise of legislative, quasi-legislative, judicial or quasijudicial functions.2 Wis. Stat. § 893.80(4). But while the 2 The text of the immunity statute does not mention the state or its employees. Townsend v. Wis. Desert Horse Ass'n, 42 Wis. 2d 414, 422-23, 167 N.W.2d 425 (1969). However, Holytz v. City of Milwaukee, 17 Wis. 2d 26, 40, 115 N.W.2d 618 (1962), abrogated the common law doctrine of immunity for all governmental entities, state or municipal. Given our open invitation for the legislature to reinstate governmental immunity if it thought our decision unwise, the legislative silence with respect to state employees amounted to acceptance of our decision that so far as governmental responsibility for torts is concerned, the rule is liability——the exception is immunity. Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 39; see Progressive N. Ins. Co. v. Romanshek, 2005 WI 67, ¶52, 281 Wis. 2d 300, 697 N.W.2d 417 ([G]enerally, legislative silence with regard to new courtmade decisions indicates legislative acquiescence in those decisions.) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Strangely, though, this court has said that unlike governmental immunity as applied to state employees where immunity is the rule and liability is the exception, the opposite is true for municipal actors, i.e., liability is the rule and immunity is the exception. Pries v. McMillon, 2010 WI 63, ¶20 n.11, 326 Wis. 2d 37, 784 N.W.2d 648 (emphasis added) (citation omitted). This observation is incorrect because the underlined language is plainly at odds with our decision in Holytz, and accordingly there should be no distinction in the treatment of state and municipal entities or their employees. Four years ago, Justice Prosser (joined by Justice Crooks) noted this anomaly in his scholarly concurrence in Umansky v. ABC Ins. Co., 2009 WI 82, ¶¶46-57, 319 Wis. 2d 622, 769 N.W.2d 1. I now express my agreement with Justice Prosser's conclusion that liability is the rule and immunity the exception for both municipalities and the state. 4 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg legislature codified Holytz's abrogation of governmental immunity, for the past five decades this court has been chipping away at the Holytz decision and the immunity statute. II. THE MINISTERIAL DUTY AND KNOWN DANGER EXCEPTIONS ¶106 The first thread of Holytz's newly woven tapestry to unravel was Lister v. Bd. of Regents, 72 Wis. 2d 282, 300-01, 240 N.W.2d 610 (1976), where this court laid down the discretionary/ministerial test for whether governmental immunity applied. In holding that the University of Wisconsin-Madison Registrar could not be sued for allegedly misclassifying a group of law students as non-residents for tuition purposes, we held that government employees are immune when exercising discretion, but that no immunity attaches to the negligent performance of a ministerial duty. Id. at 300-01. We opined that within the context of governmental immunity a duty is ministerial only when it is absolute, certain and imperative, involving merely the performance of a specific task when the law imposes, prescribes and defines the time, mode and occasion for its performance with such certainty that nothing remains for judgment or discretion. Id. at 301 (footnote omitted). As the decision on whether to classify a student as a Wisconsin resident for purposes of in-state tuition required some discretion and judgment, the Registrar was entitled to immunity and the hapless law students were not allowed to make their case that they paid too much tuition. Id. at 301-02. ¶107 The ministerial duty concept, though, came directly from our decision in Meyer v. Carman, 271 Wis. 329, 332, 73 5 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg N.W.2d 514 (1955). See Lister, 72 Wis. 2d at 301 n.18, 19 (citing Meyer). The problem with relying on a test from Meyer, however, was that case was decided before we abrogated governmental immunity in Holytz. So while it made sense for Meyer to speak of an exception to immunity when immunity was the rule, it made no sense for Lister to adopt an exception to a concept that had already been retired both judicially and legislatively. ¶108 Justice Prosser has also commented on the bizarre development of the ministerial duty exception from a context in which it was valuable and necessary to a context in which it is unfair and absurd. Umansky v. ABC Ins. Co., 2009 WI 82, ¶64, 319 Wis. 2d 622, 769 N.W.2d 1 (Prosser, J., concurring). By shift[ing] the focus from liability to immunity, Lister turned the Holytz decision upside down without even citing to that momentous case. Id., ¶75. With a sleight-of-hand, Lister cut the guts out of Holytz and essentially restored governmental immunity. As Justice Prosser accurately and poignantly put it: [s]o far as government responsibility for torts is concerned, immunity has become the rule and liability has become the rare exception. Justice has been confined to a crawl space too narrow for most tort victims to fit. Id., ¶78. ¶109 Following Lister, this court repeatedly relied on the ministerial duty exception to stretch governmental immunity beyond both the text of the statute and the Holytz decision. For example, we have immunized such conduct as a road test examiner's purported negligence in issuing a driver's license to 6 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg an applicant who was allegedly too overweight to drive,3 a university instructor's construction of a volleyball net,4 a school district benefits specialist's incorrect advice,5 a police officer's allegedly negligent management of a busy intersection during a rain storm,6 and a high school guidance counselor providing inaccurate information regarding a student's scholarship eligibility requirements.7 All of these decisions 3 Lifer v. Raymond, 80 Wis. 2d 503, 512, 259 N.W.2d 537 (1977). Justice Robert Hansen colorfully summed up the issue presented in Lifer: How fat is too fat? Who is too fat to be licensed to get behind the wheel and drive an automobile? Plaintiff alleges that the 320-pound driver of the auto in which he was a passenger was so fat that she should not have been granted a probationary license to drive an automobile, even though she passed the road test portion of the examination. At what point on the scales does an overweight person suffer a physical disability that prevents him or her from exercising reasonable control over a motor vehicle? The plaintiff answers that the duty to determine when corpulency becomes disabling is on the road test examiner at the time a road test is administered. The plaintiff sues the defendant examiner for breaching a duty owed to the plaintiff passenger when he passed Jeannine M. Yingling in the road test portion of her examination. Id. at 506-07. 4 Kimps v. Hill, 200 Wis. 2d 1, 5, 546 N.W.2d 151 (1996). 5 Kierstyn v. Racine Unified Sch. Dist., 228 Wis. 2d 81, 85, 95, 596 N.W.2d 417 (1999). 6 Lodl v. Progressive N. Ins. Co., 2002 WI 71, ¶¶11, 31, 253 Wis. 2d 323, 646 N.W.2d 314. 7 Scott v. Savers Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 2003 WI 60, ¶¶9, 18, 262 Wis. 2d 127, 663 N.W.2d 715. 7 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg are at odds with Holytz and the immunity statute in that none of these actions can fairly be described as legislative, quasilegislative, judicial, or quasi-judicial functions. Wis. Stat. § 893.80(4); Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 40. Yet that is where this court has taken immunity law courtesy of the misappropriated ministerial duty exception. ¶110 In addition to having no connection whatsoever to the governing statute, the other flaw with the ministerial duty test is that it is excruciatingly narrow. As one court has put it, it would be difficult to conceive of any official act, no matter how directly ministerial, that did not admit of some discretion in the manner of its performance, even if it involved only the driving of a nail. Ham v. Los Angeles Cnty., 189 P. 462, 468 (Cal. Ct. App. 1920); see also Swanson v. United States, 229 F. Supp. 217, 219-20 (N.D. Cal. 1964) (In a strict sense, every action of a government employee, except perhaps a conditioned reflex action, involves the use of some degree of discretion.). The upshot of this court's adoption of the ministerial duty exception is that we have in essence overturned Holytz and rewritten Wis. Stat. § 893.80. ¶111 The ministerial duty exception is also the progenitor responsible for the illegitimate birth of the known danger exception. In Cords v. Anderson, 80 Wis. 2d 525, 531-32, 53638, 259 N.W.2d 672 (1977), a group of college students were injured while hiking at a state park when they fell from an unguarded and unmarked 90-foot cliff into a gorge. The plaintiffs sued the manager of the park (a state employee) for 8 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg failing to put up warning signs along the trail. Id. at 537-38. The manager, naturally, asserted governmental immunity. Id. However, instead of asking whether the manager's actions were legislative, quasi-legislative, judicial, or quasi-judicial, as Holytz requires for state employees, this court (relying on Lister) framed the question as whether the manager had an absolute, certain, or imperative duty to either place the signs warning the public of the dangerous conditions existing on the upper trail or to advise his superiors of the condition with a view toward adequate protection of the public responding to the invitation to use this facility. Cords, 80 Wis. 2d at 541. Inexplicably, the court held that because the park manager knew the park terrain was dangerous, the duty to either place warning signs or advise superiors of the conditions is, on the facts here, a duty so clear and absolute that it falls within the definition of a ministerial duty. Id. at 542 (emphasis added). I say inexplicably because the choice to use one of two options quite obviously renders the decision discretionary rather than ministerial.8 In any event, to circumvent the 8 This court has also inconsistently applied the known danger exception, most significantly in Lodl. In that case, a heavy rain storm triggered a power outage that caused the traffic lights to go out at a busy intersection. 253 Wis. 2d 323, ¶6. A police sergeant investigated the blackout and decided to open the folded stop signs that were affixed to the poles of the traffic control signals. Id., ¶7. Another officer arrived on the scene, called for backup, and requested that portable stop signs be brought to the intersection. Id., ¶8. An accident occurred minutes later, before the police backup or portable signs arrived. Id., ¶10. The injured plaintiff sued, alleging that the second officer who arrived on the scene had a ministerial duty to manually control traffic at the intersection. Id., ¶¶11-12. Extrapolating from our reasoning 9 No. 2007AP221 & 2007AP1440.mjg judicially created ministerial duty test we invented what became known as the known danger exception, thus creating an exception to an exception. Unfortunately, neither the ministerial duty test nor the known danger test is grounded in Holytz or the immunity statute, so although we reached the correct ultimate conclusion in Cords (immunity does not apply), we took an incorrect route. III. A NEW APPROACH FOR GOVERNMENTAL IMMUNITY JURISPRUDENCE ¶112 If we were to do away with the ministerial duty and known danger exceptions, what test would we use to determine whether an action is legislative, quasi-legislative, judicial, or quasi-judicial? I recommend that this court adopt the planning-operational distinction. This test, which is used in in Cords v. Anderson, 80 Wis. 2d 525, 259 N.W.2d 672 (1977), we explained that a dangerous situation constitutes a known danger for immunity purposes only when there exists a known present danger of such force that the time, mode and occasion for performance is evident with such certainty that nothing remains for the exercise of judgment and discretion. Id., ¶38 (quoting C.L. v. Olson, 143 Wis. 2d 701, 717, 422 N.W.2d 614 (1988)). With that principle in mind, we concluded that there was no known danger, as the second officer had discretion in deciding how to respond when he arrived at the intersection. Lodl, 253 Wis. 2d 323, ¶¶46-47. Yet this conclusion was clearly at odds with Cords, where we held that the park manager was required to take one of two options. 80 Wis. 2d at 542. For a further