Opinion ID: 827256
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the majority reaches the wrong result

Text: UNDER ANY STANDARD The majority’s application of its own standard is hopelessly flawed. The majority immunizes defendants from liability in this case by concluding that Johnson’s acts were unforeseeable. Ante at 13. The majority supports this conclusion by claiming that, even when viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, Johnson’s past violent conduct toward members of the public and inmates merely amounted to “a propensity to disobey work-related protocol . . . .”16 Ante at 13. Furthermore, the majority concludes that Johnson’s rape of plaintiff was “highly unpredictable,” ante at 10, and, “in essence, unpreventable,” ante at 11. The majority’s characterization of Johnson’s conduct is extraordinarily one-sided, however. First, Johnson’s conduct was clearly not “unpreventable” because defendants had a policy in place that required a female officer to be present anytime a female inmate was in the jail. Presumably, the motivation behind this policy is at least in part to prevent the type of conduct that Johnson committed in this case. Defendants violated that policy on the night in question, which allowed Johnson to use the supervisory powers delegated 16 The majority attempts to downplay Johnson’s prior violent conduct toward inmates by emphasizing that it was directed at a male inmate who had provoked Johnson. Although inconvenient to the majority’s analysis, it is notable that defendants considered Johnson’s actions “misconduct” and reprimanded him for it. Therefore, it appears that defendants did not consider Johnson’s violent conduct toward an inmate as insignificant as the majority would have us believe. 19 to him by defendants to violently rape plaintiff. Thus, the rape of plaintiff was entirely preventable, had defendants merely followed their own policy. Furthermore, the fact that such a policy existed also strongly implies that defendants considered conduct like Johnson’s foreseeable. Therefore, regardless of whether the rape was preventable, defendants’ policy is one of several factors that create a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether Johnson’s conduct was foreseeable, even under the majority’s flawed new test.17 Second, as the majority concedes, Johnson’s alleged threatening calls to his landlord and the physical altercation with an inmate reveal Johnson’s tendency to react violently when provoked. One would think that working as a deputy in a jail would entail frequent provocation by inmates. Accordingly, tendencies such as those displayed by Johnson, when viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, present a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether his subsequent violent rape of an inmate was sufficiently foreseeable to hold defendants vicariously liable. The majority strains to support the weight of its misguided holding by citing the majority opinion in Brown v Brown, 478 Mich 545; 739 NW2d 313 (2007).18 In Brown, 17 The majority bristles at my characterization of its test as “new.” See ante at 11 n 32. However, given that the majority overrules Champion, which it admits would otherwise apply to this case, classifying its test as “new” is entirely accurate, in my judgment. 18 Although I continue to adhere to my dissent in Brown, 478 Mich at 570-580 (CAVANAGH, J., dissenting), I will apply the majority opinion from Brown because, even under the Brown majority’s excessively narrow standard of foreseeability, this case presents a genuine issue of material fact. And because I apply the rule from the majority 20 the attacker had no criminal history and had not previously committed any violent acts but had repeatedly made heinous sexual comments to the plaintiff of which the defendant-employer was aware. Subsequently, while working with the plaintiff on the night shift, the attacker violently raped the plaintiff. The Brown majority concluded that the defendant’s knowledge of the attacker’s comments alone were not sufficient to make the subsequent rape foreseeable. Id. at 554-555. The Brown majority chastised the Court of Appeals panel in that case for relying on Hersh v Kentfield Builders, Inc, 385 Mich 410; 189 NW2d 286 (1971), to reach the opposite conclusion because, according to the Brown majority, Hersh was distinguishable on its facts. In Hersh, an employee who had a prior manslaughter conviction violently attacked a client of the defendant-employer. This Court unanimously held that the defendant-employer was liable for its employee’s violent attack on the client because the defendant knew of the employee’s past violent act. Id. at 413.19 The Brown majority seized on this reasoning to conclude that the defendant in Brown could not be liable for its employee’s rape of the plaintiff because the employee had only engaged in “boorish” sexual comments toward the plaintiff but had no history of violent acts. Brown, 478 Mich at 557-562. Although the Brown majority’s analysis created a dangerous rule whereby “no infirmity of character, shown by speech, [is] sufficient to allow a jury to decide whether, opinion in Brown, the majority’s critique of the Brown dissent, ante at 11 n 32, is entirely irrelevant. 19