Opinion ID: 2200470
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the negligent supervision issue

Text: Banks, as we have noted, asked that liability be imposed against the District on two separate theories. His first claim involved Officer Hyder's alleged gross negligence in the pursuit of Webb. The second was based on Detective Scott's alleged ordinary negligence in supervising the chase. In this court, the parties have focused primarily on the sufficiency or insufficiency of the evidence to show gross negligence on the part of Hyder, and on the correctness or incorrectness of the judge's instruction permitting the jury to find gross negligence on the basis of a violation of the police general order standing alone. Because we are compelled to affirm the judgment on the basis of the jury's verdict as to Banks' negligent supervision claim, however, we do not reach the issues relating to Hyder's alleged gross negligence. The District of Columbia Employee Non-Liability Act precludes the District from asserting the defense of governmental immunity in cases arising from the negligent operation by a District employee, within the scope of his or her employment, of a vehicle owned or controlled by the District. D.C.Code § 1-1212 (1992). [3] Section 1-1212 further provides, however, that in the case of a claim arising out of the operation of an emergency vehicle on an emergency run the District shall be liable only for gross negligence. It is undisputed that the police cruiser operated by Officer Hyder during the pursuit of Webb was an emergency vehicle on an emergency run. See D.C.Code § 1-1211(4). While charging the jury, the trial judge defined, and differentiated between, gross negligence and ordinary negligence. In conformity with § 1-1212, he correctly instructed the jury that, in connection with the chase itself, Banks was required to show that Officer Hyder was grossly negligent. With respect to the negligent supervision claim, however, the judge told the jurors that negligent supervision, that goes to ordinary negligence.  (Emphasis added). He then defined ordinary negligence as the failure to exercise ordinary care. Thus, negligence is doing something a person who uses ordinary care wouldn't do or not doing something a person using ordinary care would do. The jurors were thus unambiguously told that the District could be liable on a negligent supervision theory even if no representative of the District was found to have been grossly negligent. The District contends that this was error, and we agree. Banks' claims in this case arose out of the operation of an emergency vehicle on an emergency run, within the meaning of § 1-1212. It was Hyder's pursuit of Webbthe prototypical activity to which § 1-1212 appliesthat Scott is alleged to have supervised in a negligent manner. By its unambiguous terms, § 1-1212 was designed to limit the District's liability in pursuit cases to those situations in which a representative of the District was grossly negligent. See generally Judge FARRELL'S concurring opinion, post at 983. It would surely be incongruous, in light of the statutory requirement of gross negligence, to suggest that a plaintiff injured solely as a result of ordinary negligence by a supervisor can recover against the District. The statute plainly requires a showing of gross negligence by someone acting for the District. To treat a supervisor's ordinary negligence as sufficient would cut the concept too fine and could significantly cripple the limitation expressly incorporated in the District's waiver of governmental immunity provided for in D.C.Code § 1-1212 (1987). Abney v. District of Columbia, 580 A.2d 1036, 1041 (D.C.1990). As we noted in Abney, generally ... waivers of immunity are to be read narrowly. Id. We therefore conclude that the trial judge's instruction to the jury, to the effect that Banks' negligent supervision claim could be made out by proving ordinary negligence on the part of Sergeant Scott, rather than gross negligence, was contrary to the statute and erroneous. [4]
The District, however, never objected to this instruction, nor did it express any dissatisfaction with it, either directly or indirectly. On the contrary, at the conclusion of the judge's charge, the Assistant Corporation Counsel reiterated her dissatisfaction with the judge's instruction that the jury could find gross negligence on the basis of a violation of the MPD's general order, see pp. 975-976, supra, but she did not say a word about the negligent supervision claim. Moreover, the District effectively invited the judge to treat negligent supervision as requiring ordinary negligence rather than gross negligence. Prior to the judge's charge, the Assistant Corporation Counsel tendered to the court Defendant's Proposed Verdict Form, which would have inquired of the jury in relation to Count I if the District was grossly negligent in pursuing the fleeing felon, but would have asked as to Count II if the District was negligent in the supervision of its police officers. (Emphasis added). [5] Rule 51 of the Superior Court's Rules of Civil Procedure provides in pertinent part that [n]o party may assign as error the giving or the failure to give an instruction unless that party objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating distinctly [6] the matter objected to and the grounds of the objection. The language of the Rule recognizes no explicit exception to its proscription. We may reverse a judgment on the basis of an incorrect instruction, notwithstanding the lack of a sufficient objection, only where it is apparent from the face of the record that a miscarriage of justice has occurred. Weisman v. Middleton, 390 A.2d 996, 1000 (D.C.1978) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). This is essentially the language of plain error. See District of Columbia v. Wical Ltd. Partnership, 630 A.2d 174, 182-83 (D.C.1993). Moreover, courts are especially reluctant to reverse for plain error when it is invited, Wical, supra, 630 A.2d at 183 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted), and there is more than a hint in this record that the District invited the error of which it now complains. We find no plain error or miscarriage of justice in this record. The action by the trial court which the District invited or encouraged below, but which it now assails on appeal, is essentially an incorrect statement of the degree of negligence required to establish negligent supervision. Such an error is unfortunate, but it does not rise to the level of a miscarriage of justice. Indeed, in Joyner v. District of Columbia, 109 Daily Wash. L.Rptr. 357 (D.C.Super.Ct.1981), the court held, on facts quite similar to those here, [7] that an impartial jury might reasonably find that the District was grossly negligent as a result of the manner in which a pursuing officer conducted a comparable high-speed chase. The District insists that Joyner was wrongly decided, and reasonable people might differ on that score. [8] Given the similarity of the two cases, however, a judgment in Banks' favor is not the stuff of which a finding of miscarriage of justice is made. Moreover, for the reasons stated in Judge FARRELL'S concurring opinion, we agree that the error was not plain (in the sense of clear or obvious). See United States v. Olano, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 1777, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993). To reverse this judgment on the basis of an instructional error to which the District did not object would prejudice important principles of judicial management. As we observed in Hunter v. United States, 606 A.2d 139, 144 (D.C.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 113 S.Ct. 509, 121 L.Ed.2d 444 (1992). [l]itigants should not be permitted to keep some of their objections in their hip pockets and to disclose them only to the appellate tribunal; [o]ne cannot take his chance on a favorable verdict, reserving a right to impeach it if it happens to go the other way. Palmer Constr. Co. v. Patouillet, 42 A.2d 273, 274 (D.C.1945); see also Hopkins v. United States, 595 A.2d 995, 996 n. 3 (D.C.1991) (quoting Patouillet ). The District suggested at oral argument that these considerations and others like them apply with less force to government attorneys than to private counsel, but we firmly rejected such a contention in Wical, 630 A.2d at 183-84, and do so again here. [9] Accordingly, we conclude that the instructional error in question did not constitute plain error, nor did it result in a miscarriage of justice.
The District argues that Sergeant Scott was not grossly negligent (or even negligent) in failing to intercede to stop the pursuit. The District may have a point as to gross negligence, although, in light of the judge's instruction and the lack of any objection thereto, we need not and do not decide that question. Insofar as the District claims that the evidence was insufficient to show ordinary negligence on Scott's part, we are compelled to disagree. The trial judge, who was on the scene and whose vantage point was superior to ours, explicitly rejected this argument in his opinion denying the District's post-trial motions. See Banks I, supra, 120 Daily Wash.L.Rptr. at 1610. Moreover, in reviewing the trial court's refusal to grant the District's motion for judgment n.o.v. we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to Banks. Etheredge v. District of Columbia, 635 A.2d 908, 915-16 (D.C.1993). It is only in the unusual case, in which only one conclusion could reasonably be drawn from the evidence, that the court may properly grant such a motion. Id. In the present case, Sergeant Scott was kept abreast of the developments in the chase as they unfolded. He knew that Webb was suspected of a property offense, not a crime against the person. An impartial jury could reasonably find that Scott also knew or should have known that the pursuit was being conducted at very high speeds in residential areas of the city, that it was early afternoon in broad daylight, and that the speeding vehicles passed by an elementary school at a time when the school could be expected to be open. Moreover, there was evidence that Webb drove recklessly and at high speed only when he was aware that the officers were pursuing him; the jury could reasonably find that the pursuit induced his recklessness at the wheel. We conclude, under these circumstances, that the question of ordinary negligence on Scott's part in supervising the pursuit, and in not ordering its termination, was properly left to the jury. Cf. Joyner, supra, 109 Daily Wash.L.Rptr. at 372 (impartial jury could reasonably find that a pursuing officer's failure to terminate a similar chase constituted gross negligence on his part).
In the trial court, the District contended, remarkably, that liability was barred by the public duty doctrine, both in regard to Officer Hyder's pursuit and as to Sergeant Scott's supervision of it. No distinction was asserted as between Banks' two claims in relation to the applicability of that doctrine. Citing a number of our cases, including Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1, 4 (D.C.1981) (en banc), the District argued that it was subject to liability for the acts of its employees only if the duty owed to the plaintiff was a special duty to that person as an individual, and that there was no liability if the duty was a general duty to the public at large. The District insisted that any duty Officer Hyder had in conducting the chase, or that Sergeant Scott had in monitoring it, was owed to the public at large and not to Mr. Banks, and that the District therefore could not be held liable. The problem with the District's position in the trial court is that, if adopted, it would nullify § 1-1212. That statute contemplates that the District of Columbia shall be liable to a person injured in the pursuit of a fleeing wrongdoer if that injury is the result of the District's gross negligence. Under the statute, the duty not to be grossly negligent can be owed only to persons injured in such a pursuit, and the identities of such persons cannot be known to the District in advance. If the District owed no duty to such persons, then § 1-1212 would not confer any rights on anyone. The trial judge emphatically and correctly rejected the District's initial position, and the District has apparently abandoned it on appeal. The District does contend, however, that if § 1-1212, with its gross negligence standard, does not apply to the negligent supervision claim, then (but only then) the public duty doctrine protects the District from liability with respect to Count II. That is a far more reasonable proposition than the one which the District asserted in the trial court. We have held, however, that the negligent supervision claim is one arising out of the operation of an emergency vehicle on an emergency run, and that the gross negligence standard of § 1-1212 does apply to it. Accordingly, we need not decide the purely hypothetical question whether, in the absence of the statute, a negligent supervision claim against the District based on Sergeant Scott's failure to terminate the pursuit would be barred by the public duty doctrine.