Opinion ID: 2209506
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: Trial Court Findings of State's Negligence

Text: The trial court found that the State was negligent in two respects: (1) The State failed to properly maintain the highway surface, which resulted in a pool of water that constituted a hazard to motorists, and (2) the State failed to warn motorists or take other appropriate action to minimize the danger of the culvert headwall, given its presence in what should have been an unimpeded clear zone. The trial court determined the State's failure to maintain the road and failure to warn of the location of the headwall or to take steps to minimize the danger of the headwall proximately caused Woollen's injury. On appeal, the State claims that the trial court erroneously mandated an onerous `state of the art' standard for all state roads. Brief for appellant at 21. The State's argument is without merit. The section of Highway 136 upon which the accident occurred was constructed in 1955, when no standardized or official safety criteria governed the road design at issue. The trial court correctly found that the State was immune from liability for the design of the road, but that Woollen's claim against the State for negligent maintenance of the road was actionable and supported by the trial evidence. In Maresh v. State, 241 Neb. 496, 518, 489 N.W.2d 298, 314 (1992), we stated that design is not actionable, as it involves discretionary decisions, but maintenance is actionable, as it does not. The holding quoted above in Maresh was relied upon in Lemke v. Metropolitan Utilities District, 243 Neb. 633, 502 N.W.2d 80 (1993), where we held that when (1) a governmental entity has actual or constructive notice of a dangerous condition or hazard caused by or under the control of the governmental entity and (2) the dangerous condition or hazard is not readily apparent to persons who are likely to be injured by it, the governmental entity has a nondiscretionary duty to warn of the danger or take other protective measures that may prevent injury as the result of the dangerous condition or hazard. In Lemke, the defendant, a governmental entity which provided natural gas and associated products and services, was held liable for the plaintiff's catastrophic injuries resulting from leaking gas hoses which the defendant knew were defective and dangerous, but about which the defendant had issued no warning to alert others of the danger posed by the hoses nor taken steps to minimize the danger. The State's liability for failure to maintain highways is the same as the comparable liability of counties. Maresh, supra . See § 81-8,219(12). Thus, to the extent applicable, we rely on cases involving alleged failure by political subdivisions to maintain highways. In the case at bar, in order to establish the State's negligence, Woollen had to prove the four basic elements of negligence, namely, duty, breach of duty, proximate causation, and damages. Scholl v. County of Boone, 250 Neb. 283, 289, 549 N.W.2d 144, 148 (1996). We analyze these elements below.