Opinion ID: 4569209
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: DFS’s Breach of Duty Argument

Text: “The elements of a cause of action in tort are: (1) a legal duty owed by defendant to plaintiff, (2) breach of that duty by defendant, (3) injury to plaintiff legally caused by defendant’s breach, and (4) damages as a result of that injury.” Estate of Rotell v. Kuehnle, 38 So. 3d 783, 788 (Fla. 2d DCA 2010) (quoting O’Keefe v. Orea, 731 So. 2d 680, 684 (Fla. 1st DCA 1998)). Most negligence claims involve a negligent actor (one who owes a legal duty and breaches that duty) directly causing injury for which a plaintiff seeks to recover damages. This is because “[g]enerally, one has no duty to control the conduct of another to -9- prevent harm, and no duty to warn those who may be endangered by harmful conduct, including the criminal acts of a third person.” 65 C.J.S., Negligence § 60 (2010) (footnotes omitted). However, “[a]n act or an omission may be negligent if the actor realizes or should realize that it involves an unreasonable risk of harm to another through the conduct of the other or a third person which is intended to cause harm, even though such conduct is criminal.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 302B (1965). This theory of liability is often referred to as “derivative liability” and involves “wrongful conduct both by the person who is derivatively liable and the actor whose wrongful conduct was the direct cause of injury to another. The liability is derivative because it depends upon a subsequent wrongful act or omission.” William D. Underwood & Michael D. Morrison, Apportioning Responsibility in Cases Involving Claims of Vicarious, Derivative, or Statutory Liability for Harm Directly Caused by the Conduct of Another, 55 Baylor L. Rev. 617, 619 (2003) (footnote omitted). Barnett’s tort theory is that DCF is derivatively liable for Dell’s criminal conduct, and the parties disagree as to whether the $200,000 limit in subsection (5) is linked to DCF’s wrongful conduct or Dell’s wrongful conduct. DFS argues that the statutory phrase “incident or occurrence” refers to the negligent or wrongful acts or omissions of its employees, the “state actors,” as held by the Fourth District. Barnett disagrees, arguing that “incident or occurrence” - 10 - refers to Dell’s crimes, which directly harmed Whyte-Dell and her children. On this issue, we agree with Barnett for three reasons. First, to equate “negligent or wrongful act or omission” with “incident or occurrence” would negate the Legislature’s decision to use different phrases in different parts of section 768.28. Section 768.28 does not limit liability to $200,000 for all claims arising out of the same “negligent or wrongful act or omission” of a state actor. Instead, it uses the phrase “negligent or wrongful act or omission” to describe the state actor’s breach of duty in subsections (1) and (14); uses the phrases “act or omission,” “acts or omissions,” and “act, event or omission” to describe the state actor’s breach of duty in subsection (9); and uses the phrases “acts or omissions” and “act or omission” to describe the State’s breach of duty in subsections (14) and (19). If the Legislature wanted to link the limit of liability to a state actor’s breach of duty, it knew how to describe the breach, having done so repeatedly with the “act or omission” language. Use of the words “incident or occurrence” in subsection (5) signals that the language means something different. Second, the definitions cited by Barnett show that the words “incident” and “occurrence” more naturally and reasonably include the point at which damages are inflicted, not just the (potentially remote) point at which the state defendant’s - 11 - negligent or wrongful act occurs. “Incident” is defined as “an individual occurrence or event,” Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/browse /incident?s=t (last visited Sept. 17, 2020); “an occurrence of an action or situation that is a separate unit of experience,” Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/incident (last visited Sept. 17, 2020); or “a discrete occurrence or happening; an event,” Black’s Law Dictionary 911(11th ed. 2019). The word “occurrence” is defined as “something that takes place[;] the action or process of happening or taking place,” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1561 (1981); “the action, fact, or instance of occurring,” Dictionary.com, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/occurrence?s=t (last visited Sept. 17, 2020); or “something that occurs; the action or fact of happening or occurring,” Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/occurrence (last visited Sept. 17, 2020). What these definitions all share in common is action, a happening, an event. The words work to describe Dell’s immediate harm-causing actions, which could also be described as an event, but not to describe DCF’s alleged omissions and failures to act. With respect to DCF, Barnett alleged that “[d]espite the growing number of domestic disturbance calls and . . . DCF’s obligations to comply with all state and federal laws and regulations as well as departmental/district procedures regarding the safety of minor children . . . DCF failed to adequately investigate and protect the - 12 - Barnett Children.” This is typical of derivative liability cases, which usually involve omissions, or failures to act, and allegations that if the correct actions had been taken, those actions would have prevented the harm caused by the action of the second tortfeasor (the immediate harm-causing event). Because the definitions of “incident” and “occurrence” match the injury-causing event in all cases and do not match the omissions or wrongful conduct of the initial tortfeasor in a derivative liability case, we conclude that the phrase “injury or occurrence” is most reasonably understood as referring to the injury-causing event. Finally, the relevant statutory phrase is “claim or judgment . . . arising out of the same incident or occurrence” and the text’s use of the words “arising out of” also are best understood to include the immediate injury-causing event, not just the negligent omissions that allegedly gave rise to that event. The object of “arising out of” in the statute is the plaintiff’s “claim or judgment.” No claim exists, and no judgment can occur, until the cause of action accrues by completion of the last element—“damages as a result of [an] injury.” Kuehnle, 38 So. 3d at 788 (quoting O’Keefe, 731 So. 2d at 684). “Arise” is defined as “to begin to occur or to exist[;] to come into being.” Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/arise (last visited Sept. 17, 2020). Because the claim does not “come into being” or “begin to exist” until the last element accrues, the text is most reasonably read as including the “incident or occurrence” that caused the last - 13 - element and the cause of action to accrue—the injury-causing event, that is, the event at which damages are actually inflicted. Having determined that the incident or occurrence in this derivative liability case is the injury-causing event, the next question is whether, in the context of a mass shooting incident involving multiple deaths or injuries, the “same incident or occurrence” is referring to the whole event or criminal episode, i.e., the “shooting incident,” or whether the shooting of each victim constitutes a separate incident or occurrence. IV. One “Incident or Occurrence” or Multiple Incidents? Barnett argues that the shooting of each individual victim should be viewed as a separate “incident or occurrence,” relying primarily on Florida cases that either (1) involved distinct and separate events that could only be reasonably viewed as separate incidents, see, e.g., Pierce v. Town of Hastings, 509 So. 2d 1134, 1135 (Fla. 5th DCA 1987) (holding that separate counts of false imprisonment and malicious prosecution arising from arrests separated by more than a month for violations of a county ordinance that were also separated by an equivalent amount of time constituted separate incidents for purposes of applying subsection (5)); Zamora v. Fla. Atl. Univ. Bd. of Trs., 969. So. 2d 1108, 1114 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007) (ruling that an age discrimination claim and a separate cause of action for retaliation, based upon action taken after the claimant filed the age - 14 - discrimination complaint, constituted separate incidents for purposes of applying subsection (5)), or (2) interpreted the word “occurrence” in an insurance contract, see, e.g., Koikos v. Travelers Ins. Co., 849 So. 2d 263, 273 (Fla. 2003) (holding that the shooting of each individual victim at an insured’s property during the same criminal episode constituted a separate “occurrence” for purposes of recovery under the terms of the insurance contract); N.H. Ins. Co. v. RLI Ins. Co., 807 So. 2d 171, 171-72 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002) (same). The first group of cases, that could only be reasonably viewed as involving separate incidents, are not analogous to the facts of this case, do not address the question at issue in this case, do not analyze the text of subsection (5) in a way that sheds any light on the issue before us, and in no way aid our analysis. With respect to the second group of cases, the insurance contract cases, Barnett’s argument ignores the “fundamental principle of statutory construction (and, indeed, of language itself) that the meaning of a word cannot be determined in isolation, but must be drawn from the context in which it is used.” Advisory Op. to Governor re Implementation of Amendment 4, the Voting Restoration Amendment, 288 So. 3d 1070, 1079 (Fla. 2020) (quoting Textron Lycoming Reciprocating Engine Div., Avco Corp. v. United Auto., Aerospace, Agric. Implement Workers of Am., Int’l Union, 523 U.S. 653, 657 (1998)). The question presented in Koikos focused on how the word “occurrence” was “defined in the - 15 - policy of liability issued by Travelers to Koikos, the insured.” 849 So. 2d at 266. The majority answered this question by analyzing the word “accident,” a word central to the policy’s definition of “occurrence” and which the majority found to be controlling in its analysis of the policy language. Id. at 266-71. Subsection (5) does not use the word “accident,” and given the wholly different contexts, we find the argument based upon the insurance policy cases unhelpful and unpersuasive. We also note that any ambiguity in an insurance contract must be “liberally construed in favor of coverage and strictly against the insurer.” Gov’t Emps. Ins. Co. v. Macedo, 228 So. 3d 1111, 1113 (Fla. 2017) (quoting Wash. Nat’l Ins. Corp. v. Ruderman, 117 So. 3d 943, 950 (Fla. 2013)). By contrast, and as already discussed, ambiguities in this sovereign-immunity-waiving statute must be “construed narrowly in favor of the government.” FINR II, Inc., 221 So. 3d at 1165. Finally, Barnett focuses on the word “same,” arguing that it modifies the phrase “incident or occurrence” and that because each victim was shot “at different points in time, in different parts of the home,” and was “a specific targeted individual,” we should view each separate shooting as a different event. Barnett’s juxtaposition of the words “same” and “different” is not helpful because one could also accurately say that all victims were targeted by the same person, in the same house, at the same time, with the same weapon, in a single criminal episode. See - 16 - e.g., State v. Sousa, 903 So. 2d 923, 924, 927 (Fla. 2005) (describing “a shooting spree at a greyhound track and involved three victims, with two of the victims being shot by Sousa in rapid succession” as “a single criminal episode”); Francis v. State, 808 So. 2d 110, 136 (Fla. 2001) (“This Court has repeatedly held that where a defendant is convicted of multiple murders, arising from the same criminal episode, the contemporaneous conviction as to one victim may support the finding of the prior violent felony aggravator as to the murder of another victim.”) (emphasis added); James v. State, 695 So. 2d 1229, 1231, 1236 (Fla. 1997) (describing the murder of one victim by strangulation in one room followed by sexual assault, and then murder of a second victim by stabbing in a second room, and followed by the kidnapping of a third victim confined in a third room as a “single criminal episode”). The phrase “same incident or occurrence” is most reasonably understood as referring to the criminal (more broadly, injury-causing) event as a whole, not to the smaller segments of time and action that make up the crime against each individual victim, because this is the way that we commonly talk about this type of tragic occurrence—as a single event with multiple victims. Additionally, this reading fits most naturally given the context of subsection (5), which is designed to limit the State’s liability to a set amount for all claims arising out of an “incident or occurrence,” after which all claimants must seek additional compensation from the - 17 - Legislature. See § 768.28(5) (limiting the State’s liability to $100,000 per person with an aggregate cap of $200,000 for “all . . . claims or judgments paid by the state or its agencies or subdivisions arising out of the same incident or occurrence”). As argued by DFS, Barnett would essentially have us write this aggregate cap out of the statute altogether for most claims involving a criminal episode with multiple victims. We cannot rewrite the statute and do not view Barnett’s reading as reasonable. However, to the extent that the phrase “incident or occurrence” is ambiguous and could reasonably be read as referring either to the overall incident or to the smaller segments of time and action that constitute the individual crimes against each separate victim, this would lead us to the substantive rules of statutory construction that statutes altering the common law “are narrowly construed” and that “[w]aivers of sovereign immunity must be construed narrowly in favor of the government.” FINR II, Inc., 221 So. 3d at 1165. In sum, the claims stemming from the mass shooting of Dell’s victims arose from the same incident or occurrence and are therefore subject to the $200,000 aggregate cap for damages paid by the State, its agencies, or subdivisions. Subsection (5) does not prevent Barnett and Nelson from obtaining a judgment in excess of the sovereign immunity damage caps set forth therein. The caps do, - 18 - however, limit the amount of the recovery that the State—in the absence of a claims bill—shall be liable to pay without further act by the Legislature.