Opinion ID: 1175825
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Other Criteria.

Text: The remaining D.S.W. criteria, on balance, also militate in favor of imposing a duty of due care on the state. There is no question that the plaintiffs suffered injury; the asserted failure to supervise Nukapigak adequately  if proved at trial  can be viewed as closely connected to that injury. The state's abrogation of its own responsibility for adequately supervising this particularly dangerous parolee  if proved at trial  cannot be characterized as anything but morally blameworthy. A rule imposing liability for such derelictions would, in all probability, aid in deterring such conduct in the future. The state argues that the burdens and consequences of imposing financial liability for failure to supervise adequately would be severe and unwarranted. It claims that the imposition of such a duty would cause intolerable judicial interference with judgmental corrections' decisions and impose an economic burden, reordering state priorities in allocating manpower and funds and causing other socially desirable programs to suffer. We are not convinced by the generalized arguments the state has presented on this issue. By imposing a duty of due care on corrections personnel we are not requiring that the state spend limitless sums of money taking every conceivable precaution to prevent any possible violent action on the part of any parolee. We merely conclude that state officials have the duty, within the confines of existing policies and budgetary constraints, to exercise due care in supervising parolees. We do not believe that a rule imposing such a duty will significantly expand the responsibility of the state to the public and to its parolees; it might, however, convince state officials of a need to consider more carefully the decisions they make that might have potentially disastrous consequences. We therefore hold that state corrections personnel have the duty to use due care in supervising parolees and in protecting the foreseeable victims of parolees they know, or reasonably should know, to be dangerous. [13] This duty requires that such officials take whatever precautions that a reasonable person with their knowledge and authority would take. We emphasize that the recognition of the duty does not make the state liable for all harm caused by parolees, but rather makes it liable only when its negligent supervision and administration of their parole causes the injury in question. See Lipari v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 497 F. Supp. 185, 192 (D.Neb. 1980). Neakok has alleged that the state was negligent, not solely in failing to supervise Nukapigak adequately, but also in failing to warn his victims and the residents of Point Lay that he was dangerous. The state contends that it had no duty to warn Nukapigak's potential victims, both because it could not predict who they were, and for policy reasons. Ordinarily, the duty to use reasonable care to protect the foreseeable victims of a dangerous person may require a third party to take one or more of various steps, depending on the nature of the case. Thus it may call for him to warn the intended victim or others likely to apprise the victim of the danger, to notify the police, or to take whatever other steps are reasonably necessary under the circumstances. Tarasoff, 131 Cal. Rptr. at 20, 551 P.2d at 340. The cases that have held that warnings may be appropriate, however, have generally involved specifically identifiable victims. See, e.g., Tarasoff; Jablonski by Pahls v. United States, 712 F.2d 391 (9th Cir.1983). These cases have concluded that the policy reasons against issuing warnings are overshadowed when they can be limited to, and substantially protect an identified potential victim. We recognize that a requirement of warnings, unlike a requirement of careful supervision, carries with it the danger that a parolee will be stigmatized and rehabilitation thus seriously impaired. We have no interest in requiring, as a matter of law, that potentially dangerous parolees be emblazoned with scarlet letters [14] proclaiming their status and criminal history before they are released from prison. Therefore, if Nukapigak's victims were foreseeable only as members of a limitless class of unidentifiable victims of foreseeably dangerous behavior, we would not impose a duty to warn. Nukapigak's victims were not unidentifiable, however. As we have already noted, their status as residents of this small, isolated community, and as the stepdaughter and the close friends and relatives of the stepdaughter of Nukapigak make them significantly more identifiable than members of the general public would be. [15] Moreover, as residents of a community without police or parole officers, they may have had a much greater need for warnings than would a resident of a city with better access to traditional mechanisms of social control. The California Supreme Court set forth its reasons for refusing to impose a duty to warn where a specific victim was not identifiable in Thompson v. County of Alameda, 27 Cal.3d 741, 167 Cal. Rptr. 70, 614 P.2d 728 (1980). The state argues that the circumstances of this case are substantially similar to those at issue in Thompson, and urges us to find guidance in that case. In Thompson, the court held that the authorities responsible for releasing a juvenile offender who had threatened to murder an unidentified child in his mother's neighborhood had no duty to warn the parents of neighborhood children. It based its holding in part on a belief that requiring warnings in that case would be unwieldy and of little practical value, producing a cacaphony of warnings that by reason of their sheer volume would add little to the effective protection of the public. Id. 167 Cal. Rptr. at 77, 614 P.2d at 735. The court added that the generalized warnings sought to be required here would do little to increase the precautions of any particular members of the public who may already have become conditioned to locking their doors, avoiding dark and deserted streets, instructing their children to beware of strangers and taking other precautions. Id. 167 Cal. Rptr. at 78, 614 P.2d at 736. In contrast to the circumstances at work in Thompson, warnings in this case would not necessarily have been either unwieldy or ineffectual. The difficulties inherent in deciding which of the residents of a densely populated urban area to warn, and the dangers of a cacaphony of warnings disappear when the community at issue has 68 residents. It is not unreasonable to imagine that the residents of a small, isolated community have not become conditioned to protecting themselves from random violence, and that they might be much more profoundly affected by warnings. Moreover, the possibility of issuing discrete warnings to persons in a position to use them effectively is much more realistic in a village like Point Lay than in a relatively anonymous urban neighborhood. Under these circumstances, we cannot conclude that, as a matter of law, a requirement of warnings would be unduly burdensome, futile, or counterproductive. Other factors present here, and absent in Thompson, militate against precluding a finding that the state, had it exercised due care, would have warned Nukapigak's foreseeable victims. When the state releases a potentially dangerous parolee into an isolated community without either police or parole officers, it may reasonably be expected to take some action to protect the residents. The state contends that, because of budgetary constraints, this protective action cannot include the assignment of a parole officer to the community or the requirement that an officer visit the parolee there periodically. We are unwilling to hold that, under these circumstances, the state's duty of care could not require it to inform the residents of the conditions of a releasee's parole and of any information which leads it to believe he or she might be dangerous. [16] Although the California court refused to impose a duty to warn under the facts of Thompson, it did note that [i]n those instances in which the released offender poses a predictable threat of harm to a named or readily identifiable victim or group of victims who can be effectively warned of the danger, a releasing agent may well be liable for failure to warn such person. Thompson, 167 Cal. Rptr. at 80, 614 P.2d at 738 (emphasis added). We conclude that the residents of a small remote village may constitute a group of victims who are sufficiently identifiable to justify imposing a duty to warn. We therefore hold that, if Neakok can prove that the state knew or reasonably should have known that the residents of Point Lay, or Nukapigak's ultimate victims, were seriously endangered when Nukapigak was released into Point Lay, the state's duty of due care may have included a duty to warn them of the danger. [17] In conclusion, the state had a legally imposed duty to supervise Nukapigak, and a concomitant authority to impose conditions on his parole and to reincarcerate him if these conditions were not met. It thus exercised substantial control over him. We hold that, in exercising this control, the state was obligated to use reasonable care to prevent Nukapigak from causing foreseeable injury to other people. Whether the state breached its duty of care by failing to supervise Nukapigak more closely, to impose special conditions of parole, to warn the residents of Point Lay of his dangerous propensities, or to take other protective measures is a question of fact which a jury must decide. [18]