Opinion ID: 854151
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Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Contributory Negligence as a Defense

Text: Whether or how the affirmative defenses of contributory negligence and incurred risk apply to an act of jail suicide is an issue of first impression in Indiana. [1] The parties agree that because the County is a government entity, the action is covered by the Indiana Tort Claims Act, IND.CODE § 34-4-16.5-1 et seq. (1993), and exempted from the Indiana Comparative Fault Act, IND. CODE § 34-4-33-8 (1993). As a general proposition, under the Tort Claims Act, as at common law, both contributory negligence and incurred risk operate to bar a plaintiff's recovery against government actors. Town of Highland v. Zerkel, 659 N.E.2d 1113, 1120-21 (Ind.Ct.App.1995). It is well settled that a custodian under some circumstances has a legal duty to take steps to protect persons in custody from harm. As the Court of Appeals noted, [w]hen a party is in the custodial care of another ... the custodian has the duty to exercise reasonable care to preserve the life, health, and safety of the person in custody. The appropriate precautions will vary according to the facts and circumstances presented in each case. Sauders, 664 N.E.2d at 771 (citing Cole v. Indiana Dep't of Correction, 616 N.E.2d 44, 45-46 (Ind.Ct.App.1993)). However, the custodian does not have a duty to prevent a particular act (e.g. suicide). Rather, the duty is to take reasonable steps under the circumstances for the life, health, and safety of the detainee. Cole, 616 N.E.2d at 45-46. There is no inconsistency in these propositions. Although the dissent finds the net result to be a duty to prevent self harm, it is not that. It is merely a duty to take reasonable steps. The custodian is not an insurer against harm. But neither are we willing to adopt the result of the trial court's instructions, which is that the custodian is immunized from liability for breach of duty to take reasonable steps, even if that breach causes the inmate's self harm. The Restatement (Second) of Torts formulates this duty as one to protect against unreasonable risk of harm, including specifically self inflicted harm. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 314A, cmt. d (1965). [2] The degree of notice that suicide is a risk is of course a critical factor in assessing the reasonableness of the steps taken. If the suicidal tendencies of the inmate are known, the standard of care required of the custodian is elevated. Fowler v. Norways Sanitorium, 112 Ind.App. 347, 42 N.E.2d 415 (1942); Breese v. State, 449 N.E.2d 1098 (Ind.Ct.App.1983). The condition of the inmate, the circumstances of the jail, and the extent of routine precautions are all relevant to an assessment of the need for additional steps. In short, the focus is on the defendant's conduct under the circumstances. The plaintiff's actions are relevant only insofar as they are a part of the circumstances of which the custodian is or should be aware, or they bear on whether any breach of defendant's duty is causally related to the injury. Under the facts of this case, the jury might well have decided that the defendants breached no duty. There was testimony that Sauders was generally cooperative, able to walk and converse, and did not seem unusually depressed. The jury could have concluded that the jailers had no notice or reason to know of any suicidal tendency by Sauders. Sauders was booked at 12:35 a.m. and found hanging at 1:17 a.m.a gap of forty-two minutes. According to one of the jailers, Sauders was checked at about 12:50 a.m. twenty-seven minutes before the discovery. Whether a twenty-seven or forty-two minute lapse between checks of recently incarcerated and intoxicated inmates is or is not sufficient evidence of negligent conduct is for the jury to decide, irrespective of whether or not a suicide was attempted. A defense verdict on these facts was certainly possible. However, under the instructions on contributory negligence and incurred risk, [3] the jury could have based its result on one or both of these defenses based solely on the fact that the decedent killed himself. The instructions defined the two defenses in such a manner that the act of suicide could be construed as meeting those definitions. The jury was also instructed that if it found that the act of suicide met the requirements of either defense, then Sauders could not recover. If the act of suicide (or attempted suicide) is a defense to a claim for failure to take reasonable steps to protect an inmate from harm, the cause of action evaporates in any instance of suicide or attempted suicide. This would completely obviate the custodian's legal duty to protect its detainees from that form of harm. We agree with the view of the Seventh Circuit in Myers v. County of Lake, Ind., 30 F.3d 847, 853 (7th Cir.1994) that a duty to prevent someone from acting in a particular way logically cannot be defeated by the very action sought to be avoided. Although we have no example to offer, we do not exclude the possibility that contributory negligence or incurred risk might constitute a defense if based on some act other than the suicide or attempted suicide. However, because the instructions in this case permitted the suicide itself to constitute the defense, a new trial is required. The few courts in other states that have decided this issue have reached various conclusions. Cole v. Multnomah County, 39 Or.App. 211, 592 P.2d 221 (1979) rejected contributory negligence as a defense to an attempted jail suicide in reasoning very similar to ours, concluding that the acts which plaintiff's mental illness allegedly caused him to commit were the very acts which defendants had a duty to prevent, and these same acts cannot, as a matter of law, constitute contributory negligence. Id. 592 P.2d at 223. Sauders does not allege Sowles' mental illness or other lack of capacity but this factor is unrelated to the analysis. Indeed, the Oregon court went on to note that even if the plaintiff was not mentally ill, contributory negligence would not save the defendants. Awareness of the inmate's mental illness, like notice of suicidal tendencies, may be relevant to the issue of the appropriate standard of care required of the defendants, but it does not bear on the fault of the plaintiff-decedent. Similarly, DeMontiney v. Desert Manor Convalescent Ctr. Inc., 144 Ariz. 6, 695 P.2d 255 (1985) concerned a suicide in a private hospital. Based on the record in that case, the court held that upon notice of the likelihood of self-inflicted injury, the custodian had a duty to use reasonable care to prevent the harm. Occurrence of the harm itself did not release the hospital from liability as an intervening cause. Two courts in common law comparative negligence jurisdictions, Heflin v. Stewart County, Tennessee, 1995 WL 614201 (Tenn. Ct.App. Oct.20, 1995), and Hickey v. Zezulka, 439 Mich. 408, 487 N.W.2d 106 (1992), have held that a jury instruction on comparative fault in jail suicide cases is sometimes appropriate, leaving it to the fact finder to apportion fault. [4] We are free to adopt comparative fault doctrines as a matter of the common law of this state, even in areas where the legislature did not apply the Comparative Fault Act. However, custodial suicide is not an area that lends itself to comparative fault analysis. As already noted, the conduct of importance in this tort is the custodian's and not the decedent's. Further, it is hard to conceive of assigning a percentage of fault to an act of suicide. The suicide can be viewed as entirely responsible for the harm, or not relevant at all to an assessment of a custodian's breach of duty. A comparative balance of fault in a suicide case would seem to risk random all or nothing results based on a given jury's predilections. Finally, City of Belen v. Harrell, 93 N.M. 601, 603 P.2d 711 (1979) and Dezort v. Village of Hinsdale, 35 Ill.App.3d 703, 342 N.E.2d 468 (1976) are two cases that reached a contrary result. In City of Belen, the court held, without analysis, that contributory negligence in a jail suicide case was for the jury to decide. Similarly, the Dezort court concluded that because contributory negligence was a defense under the Illinois Wrongful Death Act, it applied in a jail suicide case. Neither case deals with the reasoning set forth in this opinion, Myers, and Cole, and we do not find them persuasive. In sum, we conclude that the act of suicide cannot constitute contributory negligence or incurred risk in a custodial suicide case. Because the jury was instructed on contributory negligence and incurred risk in such a manner as to permit the suicide itself to bar the claims, a new trial is required. Although we remand on the first question presented, we take up Sauders' remaining contentions because they may arise in the retrial.