Opinion ID: 2215247
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Negligence Instruction

Text: In their complaint, plaintiffs alleged that defendant had committed the tort of battery. The complaint stated in relevant part: That defendant police officer McGinn committed an unjustifiable assault and battery upon plaintiff Richard Schumann by intentionally firing his pistol so as to cause the bullet to strike Richard Schumann in the back of his neck. During the trial, the two alternative theories of liability became blurred. At the beginning of the trial, the plaintiffs took the position that defendant's conduct constituted either a battery or a negligent tort, but during the course of the trial, it appeared that plaintiffs were claiming that a negligent battery had occurred. The trial court framed the issues solely in negligence terms. He instructed the jury in relevant part as follows: The real test, or the gravamen of this case, is whether or not the defendant, Officer Michael McGinn, was negligent on April 9, 1971.             [I]f you find that the officer failed to act on reasonable or probable cause or acted absent a reasonable belief that he couldn't effect the arrest without deadly force, then you may find that the officer was negligent, that is, that he breached his duty to apply reasonable standards in his conduct. Recall that the burden to establish or prove that he breached such a standard is on the plaintiff, Richard Schumann.       If you find that Richard Schumann breached a duty to use reasonable care as I have defined it, you may find him negligent. The burden to prove his negligence in this instance is upon the defendant.             [I]n the event you find the parties equally negligent, that is, 50 percent, the plaintiff cannot recover. If the defendant is more than 50 percent negligent plaintiff would recover a percentage of his claim.    Of course, if plaintiff is more than 50 percent negligent then plaintiff is entitled to nothing. The special interrogatories submitted to the jury were standard comparative negligence interrogatories. [3] The trial court failed to instruct the jury as to the elements of the tort of battery. Plaintiffs argue that this failure on the part of the trial court constituted reversible error. Proposed instructions and proposed interrogatories submitted to the trial court by plaintiffs' counsel did not explicitly set forth the two different theories of liability, but they did set forth the substance of the elements of the tort of battery and the substance of law officers' privilege to employ firearms. The interrogatories would have asked the jury expressly whether Officer McGinn had probable cause to believe that Richard Schumann had committed a felony and whether Officer McGinn used excessive force in effecting the arrest. After the jury retired to deliberate, plaintiffs' counsel objected to the court's failure to instruct on the battery theory. Defendant argues that the instructions were correct as given. He contends, first, that the excessive use of force by a police officer may sound in negligence rather than in battery. Second, he claims that even if the instruction was improper, giving it was harmless error in that all of the elements of the officer's privilege defense were incorporated in the negligence instruction, so that in finding Officer McGinn not negligent, they necessarily found his shooting of plaintiff to be privileged. We find no support for defendant's contentions. That the excessive use of force by the arresting law-enforcement officer states a claim sounding in battery is recognized. See, Daly v. Pedersen, 278 F.Supp. 88 (D.Minn.1967). The essential elements of the tort of battery are intent and contact. They are set forth in Restatement, Torts 2d, § 18. [4] The same distinction between battery and negligently inflicted injuries is articulated, though perhaps not as explicitly, in our prior decisions. See, Ott v. G. N. Ry. Co., 70 Minn. 50, 72 N.W. 833 (1897). Nor is negligent conduct on the part of the injured victim, though such conduct may have been a cause of the injury, a defense to a battery. See, Lambrecht v. Schreyer, 129 Minn. 271, 152 N.W. 645 (1915); Schulze v. Kleeber, 10 Wis.2d 540, 103 N.W.2d 560 (1960). Neither do we find support for defendant's contention that the improper instruction constituted harmless error. It is true that the trial court instructed the jury as to the law officer's privilege to use force, and in some circumstances a firearm, in carrying out his duty. The trial court told the jury, however, that the privilege, if applicable, would negative Officer McGinn's negligence. He instructed the jury in part as follows: So to summarize briefly, if this was a misdemeanor and the officer merely observed such misdemeanor, the officer cannot under the law use deadly force in the context of this case, and he is negligent as I have said as a matter of law. If, however, he had probable cause, or reasonable belief as I have defined it, that plaintiff was committing a felony or had committed a felony, he can use reasonable force, including deadly force, if he reasonable believes that absent such force being used he could not effect the arrest. Because of such instructions, defendant argues that a jury finding of no negligence on the part of Officer McGinn necessarily implies that the jury found that Officer McGinn had probable cause to believe that plaintiff had committed a felony and that he reasonably believed that he could effect an arrest only by shooting plaintiff. Thus, he contends the error was harmless and a new trial is unnecessary. We disagree for two reasons. First, we distinguish our previous decisions on which defendant relies for the proposition that an instruction on the wrong legal theory may be harmless error. Defendant's reliance on Victor v. Sell, Minn., 222 N.W.2d 337 (1974), is particularly misplaced. There, plaintiff sued on the theory of trespass to realty, an intentional tort. The trial court instructed upon trespass, intent, contributory negligence, and assumption of the risk, and submitted special interrogatories to the jury on all of these questions. Though we held the instructions on contributory negligence and assumption of the risk to be erroneous, we affirmed the judgment in favor of defendant. Our decision was narrowly grounded on the fact that the trial court had instructed and submitted specific interrogatories on the proper legal theorytrespassin addition to giving the jury erroneous instructions and interrogatories. In the case at bar, on the other hand, the trial court did not submit both proper and improper issues to the jury, but submitted only improper issues. We do not know in this case, as we did in Victor, how the jury would have responded to specific interrogatories posing the real issues in the case. Olson v. Moorhead, 142 Minn. 267, 171 N.W. 923 (1919), on which defendant relies also, is similarly distinguishable. There, the trial court did not submit to the jury the question of defendant's willful and wanton negligence. We held that, assuming the court erred in excluding that issue, the error was harmless as the jury had absolved the defendant of ordinary negligence. A finding of no ordinary negligence obviously negatives the existence of willful, wanton, and reckless misconduct. The jury's finding of no negligence in this case, however, is not necessarily an indication that the jury found that defendant had probable cause to arrest plaintiff for a felony and reasonable grounds to believe that a firearm was necessary to effect an arrest. In addition to the instructions quoted above, the trial judge gave the jury a general negligence instruction, stating: Negligence, as I will define for you, is the failure to use reasonable care.   In the case of Defendant Officer McGinn, you must test his conduct against what the ordinary prudent police officer would have done acting with the facts, that is, the general and specific knowledge that the Defendant McGinn had available to him, under the circumstances as you find confronted the Defendant McGinn on that morning in April of 1971. In light of such instructions, the jury could find the defendant not negligent under all the circumstances if it found he had any greater basis for his conduct than having observed plaintiff committing a misdemeanor. The jurors were told defendant would be negligent as a matter of law only if they found such an observation to be defendant's only basis for his actions. There is a second reason why the error in instructions cannot be considered harmless. In framing the instruction in terms of negligence rather than battery, the trial court imposed the burden of proof on the privilege issue on the wrong party. The trial court told the jury that an unprivileged shooting would be negligent. He then instructed them that the burden of proving Officer McGinn's negligence was on Richard Schumann. The net effect of such instructions was to place the burden of negativing privilege upon the plaintiffs. Privilege, however, is an affirmative defense to the tort of battery, and thus the defendant must bear the burden of proving the essential elements of the defense. See, Prosser, Torts (4 ed.) § 26, p. 132. Specifically, the burden is on the defendant to prove (1) defendant had probable cause to believe that the person sought to be arrested either committed or was committing a felony, and (2) defendant reasonably believed that the arrest could not be effected without the use of a firearm. Reese v. City of Seattle, 81 Wash.2d 374, 503 P.2d 64 (1972); Ambrose v. Wheatley, 321 F.Supp. 1220 (D.Del.1971). See, also, Bourne v. Richardson, 133 Va. 441, 113 S.E. 893 (1922); Skinner v. Brooks, 74 Ohio App. 288, 58 N.E.2d 697 (1944); Pike v. Eubank, 197 Va. 692, 90 S.E.2d 821 (1956); Klinkel v. Saddler, 211 Iowa 368, 233 N.W. 538 (1930); Ware v. Garvey, 139 F.Supp. 71 (D.Mass. 1956). [5] The improper imposition of the burden of proof so permeates the jury's answers to the interrogatories as to require a retrial. Their finding of no negligence on the part of Officer McGinn may merely mean that the jury believed plaintiffs had failed to prove the shooting unprivileged. Under the instructions, we cannot infer that the jury found that Officer McGinn had met his burden of establishing the privilege. We hold that the trial court's instructions relating to negligence so misdirected the applicable law and the theory of the case as to require that we reverse and remand for a new trial.