Opinion ID: 1345763
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Does the statutory discretionary function exception to liability override a municipality's duty to remedy or warn of dangerous conditions on the road?

Text: In the first cases that followed the statutory establishment of governmental tort liability, the court of appeals concluded that the duty of the state or local government to remedy or warn of dangerous conditions on its roads could not be eliminated by the statutory discretionary function exception. Thus, in Holmquist v. State, 409 N.W.2d 243, 247-48 (Minn.App. 1987), rev'd, 425 N.W.2d 230, 232 (Minn. 1988), the court of appeals determined that the abrupt narrowing of the width of the shoulder on a road constituted a pitfall, trap, or snare, giving rise to a duty to warn, and that the discretionary function exception under the State Tort Claims Act was not applicable because the state had created this dangerous condition. Likewise in Nusbaum v. County of Blue Earth , the court of appeals determined that the discretionary function exception to state liability was not applicable where the state created a dangerous condition on its roads that gave rise to a duty to warn. [3] 411 N.W.2d 917, 922-23 (Minn.App.1987), aff'd on other grounds, 422 N.W.2d 713, 717 (Minn.1988). If those cases were applicable here, we would hold that the decision to grade against traffic created a dangerous condition on the county's roads that gave rise to a duty to warn, making the discretionary function exception inapplicable. The rationale of those court of appeals decisions was the same as the public policy considerations that led us to abolish governmental immunity in the first place. See, e.g., Nieting, 235 N.W.2d at 601 (stating that immunity was an exception to the fundamental concept of tort law that liability follows tortiuous conduct and that individuals and corporations are responsible for the acts of their employees acting in the course of their employment.); Spanel v. Mounds View Sch. Dist. No. 621, 264 Minn. 279, 285, 118 N.W.2d 795, 799 (1962) (stating that immunity was unfair to injured individuals in the era of expanding governmental services and is neither just nor reasonable). A governmental body that is charged with responsibility for the safety of the roads should obviously be discouraged from creating dangerous conditions on those roads. Further, a governmental body whose conduct creates a common law duty to warn its citizens about a dangerous condition should not be allowed to unilaterally immunize itself from liability by simply engaging in the process of weighing the risk of harm to the public against some competing policy concerns of the government, especially purely economic concerns. And, because the government's decision to forgo certain expenditures will provide benefits to all taxpayers, it is not fair to require a single innocent victim to bear all of the cost of the adverse consequences of that decision. Moreover, if a governmental entity is immune, and therefore has no risk of loss for negligent acts, then it has nothing to balance against forgoing the expenditure. Carried to the extreme, immunity could encourage the government to abdicate many of its most important responsibilities by making policy decisions to save the expenses necessary to execute them. Could a county, for example, allow travelers to continue to use an unsafe bridge, without warning, because it weighed the safety of the travelers against budget constraints that made it financially difficult to make the bridge safe? One would hope not, but the extension of the discretionary function exception to the deliberate abdication of governmental responsibilities, purely for cost-saving reasons, could produce precisely that extreme result. In fact, it is anomalous that a governmental body may obtain immunity from liability under the discretionary function exception by engaging in the very conduct that would increase the culpability of a private party. For example, products liability cases routinely hold that a product manufacturer who knows of a dangerous condition but defers correction by engaging in a cost-benefit analysis, balancing human lives against corporate profits, has demonstrated such callous indifference to public safety as to be subject to punitive damages. See, e.g., Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co., 119 Cal.App.3d 757, 174 Cal. Rptr. 348, 384 (1981) (There was evidence that Ford could have corrected the hazardous design defects at minimal cost but decided to defer correction of the shortcomings by engaging in a cost-benefit analysis balancing human lives and limbs against corporate profits. Ford's institutional mentality was shown to be one of callous indifference to public safety.); Hodder v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 426 N.W.2d 826, 835-36 (Minn.1988) (concluding that Goodyear's inadequate distribution of warnings about the danger of exploding rims, based on a corporate policy to restrict advertising dollars for projects that are not promoting product sales, was willful indifference to the safety of others.); Gryc v. Dayton-Hudson Corp., 297 N.W.2d 727 (Minn.1980) (upholding a punitive damages award against a manufacturer who continued, for profit reasons, to supply flammable nightwear when nonflammable material was available). We should expect our government to pay an even higher regard for the safety of its citizens. Yet the discretionary function exception, broadly applied, would make the government immune from liability precisely because it has engaged in a cost-benefit analysis balancing human lives and limbs against [budget constraints]. [4] For all of these reasons, if the issue were being presented to us for the first time, I would be inclined to agree with the early court of appeals decisions and hold that the discretionary function exception to liability is not applicable to loss caused by dangerous conditions on the road that were created by the government itself and for which no warning was given. But the question appears to have been decided differently by our precedent, albeit without explicit discussion of these policy concerns. And the Schroeders have not asked us to overrule those cases. Although I believe we should be open to reexamine the question in a future case that presents it more fully and squarely, I would apply our past precedent to this case. We decided Holmquist and Nusbaum in reverse order from that of the court of appeals. In Nusbaum, we did not reach the question of whether the discretionary function exception to state liability was inapplicable where the state created dangerous conditions because we determined that the state's decision on road signs was not a discretionary function and thus the exception did not apply in the first place. Nusbaum, 422 N.W.2d at 717. But in Holmquist, we reached the question and ultimately rejected the court of appeals' analysis, stating: To say that the discretionary function exception is inapplicable to any decision concerning a highway condition created by the State without regard to the nature of the decision is inconsistent with the language and structure of the State Tort Claims Act. The question is not whether the State's conduct resulted in a condition posing an unreasonable risk of harm; it is whether the conduct consisted of planning or policymaking decisions (protected) or operational level decisions (unprotected). To hold otherwise would effectively nullify the discretionary function exception because a claim of loss caused by the performance or failure to perform a discretionary duty frequently rests on an allegation that the State created a hazardous condition.    The fundamental inquiry must be whether the challenged decision involves a policymaking decision entrusted to the political branches of government and is, therefore, to be protected from judicial second-guessing. Holmquist, 425 N.W.2d at 232. Thereafter, in Steinke v. City of Andover, we considered the comparable discretionary function exception contained in the Municipal Tort Claims Act, Minn.Stat. § 466.03, subd. 6. 525 N.W.2d 173, 175 (Minn.1994). The court of appeals had held that the discretionary function exception was not applicable to decisions that involve warning the public of known hazards. Steinke v. City of Andover, C3-93-865, 1993 WL 491248 at  (Minn.App. Nov.30, 1993). We determined that [w]hether a governmental agency was warning the public of known hazards is not relevant in determining whether the conduct involved discretionary decision making. Steinke, 525 N.W.2d at 175.