Opinion ID: 1388423
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The majority's extensive reliance on public policy is misplaced and unsupported.

Text: The majority considers at some length various policy factors. This reliance on public policy is both unsupported by evidence and legally misplaced. The governing statutory scheme precludes us from imposing vicarious liability on a public employer as a matter of policy. Liability may be imposed only for an employee's actionable misconduct in the scope of ... employment. The only issue presented is when, if ever, a police officer's intentional criminality can fairly be deemed in the scope of the officer's employment. Intentional criminal conduct entirely beyond the scope of an officer's law enforcement duties cannot meet that test.
As noted above, we are restricted to deciding this case in light of the comprehensive statutory scheme that governs public entity liability. In appropriate cases, consideration of public policy may assist the court in construing a statute. However, because the clear legislative intent was to restrict government's liability, this court should not impose liability absent a clear indication the Legislature intended such result. The majority does not undertake such an analysis and refers only tangentially to the statutes. Its opinion offers no reasoned basis to conclude that the Legislature intended to bring all criminal misuse of an officer's status, power, or authority, however flagrantly unrelated to duty, within the scope of [the officer's] employment. Even assuming we were free to resolve the policy question, I am troubled by the majority's incomplete discussion of the competing public policies. Whether plaintiff should recover for her injuries is only one side of the equation. The other side is whether the taxpayers of the City should be forced to pay for those injuries. The public fisc is not infinite. To the contrary, in this era of limited public resources, every expenditure for one purpose requires a withdrawal of funds for another purpose. Compensating the plaintiff is a worthy and sympathetic goal. Whether it is more worthy than other public purposes is a question beyond our right or ability to answer. Professor Van Alstyne has testified that, [T]he costs and the funding problems are one of the most difficult problems in the whole field of tort liability ... in the area of government torts particularly.... (Hearings on Government Liability Before the Joint Com. on Tort Liability (Oct. 31, 1977) p. 33.) The inescapable truth is that in the modern era, payments from the public purse involve hard choices of priorities. For example, in 1986 the voters enacted Civil Code section 1431.1 to restrict liability for noneconomic damages. The voters' findings and declaration of purpose stated, Local governments have been forced to curtail some essential police, fire, and other protections because of the soaring costs of lawsuits and insurance premiums. (Civ. Code, ง 1431.1, subd. (c).) The effect of tort judgments on public resources is significant. A court should not ignore fiscal reality when expanding the frontier of tort liability. If a court wishes to sit as a super-Legislature, the court should wrestle with the same vexing problems that arise in the legislative arena and should be subject to the same electoral pressures faced by legislators. Of course, the Legislature (or the electorate itself) is best equipped to consider empirical evidence, e.g., the frequency of police rape, and to make the hard choices as to where public money will be spent. ( Brown v. Kelly Broadcasting Co. (1989) 48 Cal.3d 711, 740 [257 Cal. Rptr. 708, 771 P.2d 406] [leaving consideration of empirical data to the Legislature]; J.C. Penney Casualty Ins. Co. v. M.K. (1991) 52 Cal.3d 1009, 1028 [278 Cal. Rptr. 64, 804 P.2d 689] [noting importance of Legislature's consideration of empirical data].) We would do well to pay heed to the observation of an English jurist that public policy is a very unruly horse, and when once you get astride it you never know where it will carry you. ( Richardson v. Mellish (1824 Bing.) 103 Eng. Rep. 294, 303.) Courts should be extremely reluctant to decide for the public how its money should be spent. ( Sands v. Morongo Unified School Dist. (1991) 53 Cal.3d 863, 941 [281 Cal. Rptr. 34, 809 P.2d 809] (dis. opn. of Baxter, J., noting importance of not interfering with community-based decisions).) The majority's legislative decision to allocate public funds is especially bothersome in light of the absence of any factual support for many of the majority's critical assumptions. The majority cites no evidence for its sweeping pronouncements that vicarious employer liability for police sexual misconduct will encourage preventive measures that do not hinder the vital law enforcement function. Indeed, both common sense and prior commentary by this court (see discussion, post ) suggest the contrary.
The majority relies almost entirely on policy factors set forth in the lead opinion in John R. v. Oakland Unified School Dist. (1989) 48 Cal.3d 438 [256 Cal. Rptr. 766, 769 P.2d 948] ( John R. ).) This reliance is flawed, even puzzling, in several respects. 1. The John R. court, supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, declined to impose vicarious liability for a sexual assault by a schoolteacher on a pupil. A decision rejecting vicarious liability provides questionable support for an expansion of such liability. Even one of the two dissenters on the liability issue observed that, [V]icarious liability for sexual assaults should be recognized as the exception, not the rule. ( Id., at p. 465 (conc. and dis. opn. by Kaufman, J.).) Another critic of the John R. decision properly called it an extraordinarily broad rule against vicarious liability. ( Kimberly M. v. Los Angeles Unified School Dist. (1989) 215 Cal. App.3d 545, 550 [263 Cal. Rptr. 612] (conc. opn. of Johnson, J.).) Moreover, when John R. was decided, we had already granted review in this case. To make clear that we were not prejudging this case, the lead opinion in John R. stressed that we were not deciding whether a prior Court of Appeal decision imposing vicarious liability for a sexual assault by a police officer ... was properly decided or whether the job-created authority theory has any validity in evaluating vicarious liability for the torts of police officers. (48 Cal.3d at p. 452 (lead opn. by Arguelles, J.), italics added.) The lead opinion could not have made more clear that we were not deciding the issue now before us. ( Liu v. Republic of China (9th Cir.1989) 892 F.2d 1419, 1431 [noting that we specifically declined in John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, to decide the scope of vicarious liability for police misconduct].) 2. In light of the express disclaimer in John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, 452, that we were not deciding the issue of vicarious liability for police rape, any observations in the lead opinion were the barest of dictum, if even that. We have made clear that, `[T]he language of an opinion must be construed with reference to the facts presented by the case, and the positive authority of a decision is coextensive only with such facts.' ( Brown v. Kelly Broadcasting Co., supra, 48 Cal.3d 711, 734-735, quoting River Farms Co. v. Superior Court (1933) 131 Cal. App. 365, 369 [21 P.2d 643].) This is especially so when a court takes pains to stress the narrowness of its decision. The John R. lead opinion, supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, raised a red flag to warn against subsequent reliance on the decision. The present majority takes that flag and lofts it as a standard for a view the John R. court never adopted. 3. Most important, the policy discussion in John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, was in an opinion signed by only two justices of this court. (There were four separate opinions.) Even the other three justices who agreed there should be no vicarious liability declined to sign the portion of the lead opinion dealing with that issue. Instead, they chose to make clear that they concurred only in the majority's holding of no vicarious liability. ( Id., at p. 455 (conc. and dis. opn. of Eagleson, J.), italics added.) Except to its precise holding of no liability, the lead opinion stated a minority view and provides no authority for any proposition in a subsequent case. ( County of San Mateo v. Dell J. (1988) 46 Cal.3d 1236, 1241, fn. 5 [252 Cal. Rptr. 478, 762 P.2d 1202]; Farrell v. Board of Trustees (1890) 85 Cal. 408, 416 [24 P. 868].) This is hornbook law. No opinion has any value as a precedent on points as to which there is no agreement of a majority of the court. (9 Witkin, Cal. Procedure, Appeal, supra, ง 808, at p. 788.) 4. Even if we were to look to John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, for the type of general guidance we might seek in a treatise or plurality opinion, it would not support the majority's expansion of vicarious liability. The policy factors noted in the lead opinion weigh against vicarious liability in this case. The majority, however, applies them erroneously and inconsistently to impose liability.
The modern justification for vicarious liability is `a deliberate allocation of a risk.' ( John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, 450, quoting Hinman v. Westinghouse Elec. Co., supra, 2 Cal.3d 956, 959-960.) The John R. lead opinion acknowledged that society benefits from the authority placed in teachers and noted that, [I]t can be argued that the consequences of an abuse of that authority should be shared on an equally broad basis. (48 Cal.3d at p. 452.) The lead opinion, however, concluded this factor weighed against vicarious liability because the connection between the authority conferred on teachers and the abuse of that authority by engaging in sexual misconduct is too attenuated to allocate the risk to the employer. That conclusion equally weighs against liability in this case. Rather than relying on the result in John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, or even the lead opinion's application of this factor, the present majority relies heavily on a statement in the lead opinion that the authority of a police officer plainly surpasses that of a teacher over a student. ( Id., at p. 452.) This statement is unpersuasive: (i) It was a passing observation in dictum. (ii) It was in an opinion of only two justices. (iii) The court was fully aware this case was pending when we decided John R. As explained above, the lead opinion expressly stated we were not deciding whether the job-created authority theory has any validity in evaluating vicarious liability for the torts of police officers. ( Ibid. ) In light of these multiple limitations and disclaimers, it would be hard to find a more slender reed on which to conclude that John R. supports vicarious liability in this case. Moreover, I am not persuaded by the speculation in the John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, lead opinion and the present majority opinion that a police officer's authority plainly surpasses that of a teacher over a student. ( Id., at p. 452.) The majority's discussion, like the lead opinion in John R., fails to provide support for this assertion, and common sense suggests to the contrary. A schoolteacher alone at his home with an impressionable child has as much power and opportunity to commit a sexual assault against the child, especially one of tender years, as a police officer has to commit an assault against a citizen. Justice Kaufman pointed out in John R., supra, that the circumstances of the case virtually guaranteed that the teacher could act with impunity.... ( Id., at p. 465 (conc. and dis. opn. of Kaufman, J.), original italics.) A teacher may have even greater apparent authority than a police officer. None of the indicia of police power cited by the majority โ the uniform, badge, and gun โ creates any appearance that the officer has the authority to rape. Plaintiff did not believe Officer Schroyer was authorized to have sexual intercourse with her. To the contrary, she struggled to avoid being raped. A young child, however, may be induced to submit to a teacher's sexual depravity by being led to believe that the teacher has the authority to commit sex acts. The allocation of risk, or loss spreading as it is sometimes called, should be reasonable and informed as well as deliberate. The decision whether to impose liability requires a delicate balancing of competing interests, particularly when the defendant at law is a public entity and the defendants in fact are the taxpayers. The determination is best left to the Legislature. Neither of the decisions on which the John R. lead opinion relied for the notion of risk allocation involved governmental entities. ( Hinman v. Westinghouse Elec. Co., supra, 2 Cal.3d 956; Perez v. Van Groningen & Sons, Inc., supra, 41 Cal.3d 962.) In its comprehensive study that gave rise to the Tort Claims Act, the California Law Revision Commission explained, The problems involved in drawing standards for governmental liability and governmental immunity are of immense difficulty. Government cannot merely be made liable as private persons are, for public entities are fundamentally different from private persons.... Private persons do not prosecute and incarcerate violators of the law.... Unlike many private persons, a public entity often cannot reduce its risk of potential liability by refusing to engage in a particular activity, for government must continue to govern and is required to furnish services that cannot be adequately provided by any other agency. (Law Revision Com. Recommendations, supra, at p. 810.) The California Law Revision Commission and the Legislature required enormous amounts of empirical data and many months of collective consideration to reach difficult decisions. The majority acknowledges no difficulty whatsoever and gives no consideration to the potential effects of imposing strict liability on the City. The notion of risk allocation merits special mention in another regard. We have long emphasized that one factor to be considered in determining whether to impose a particular type of tort liability is the availability, cost, and prevalence of [liability] insurance for the risk involved. ( Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108, 113 [70 Cal. Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561, 32 A.L.R.3d 496].) The lead opinion in John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, reiterated this concern: The imposition of vicarious liability on school districts for the sexual torts of their employees would tend to make insurance, already a scarce resource, even harder to obtain and could lead to the diversion of needed funds from the classroom to cover claims. ( Id., at p. 451.) The high cost and widespread unavailability of municipal liability insurance have been widely reported and studied. (See, e.g., Hearings on Municipal Liability Insurance (Dec. 1975) Before the Joint Assem. Coms. on Finance, Insurance, and Commerce and Local Government; Hearings on Liability Insurance: Threat to the California Dream (Aug. 1986) Before the Sen. Com. on Insurance, Claims, and Corporations; California Citizens' Commission on Tort Reform, Staff Background Paper: Government Liability (1977) pp. 24-25.) The unavailability of public liability insurance reached such crisis proportions that in 1986 it became one of the key arguments in favor of Proposition 51, which the voters enacted to restrict the liability of defendants (including public entities) for noneconomic injuries. (See Ballot Pamp., argument in favor of Prop. 51 as presented to the voters, Primary Elec. (June 3, 1986) p. 34.) The majority, however, gives no consideration to this traditionally recognized factor. Our proper function is not to usurp the Legislature's budgetary function of allocating risk for public entity torts. Even if the question were ours to answer, we do not have before us sufficient empirical data on which to make the difficult choice between competing fiscal priorities.
The John R. lead opinion remarked that vicarious liability can be a spur toward accident prevention. (48 Cal.3d at p. 451.) On the other hand, John R. recognized that a public entity must not be presented with such an onerous, impossible, or impractical prevention burden that its proper functions are threatened. ( Ibid. ) This latter principle was a cornerstone of the Tort Claims Act. The California Law Revision Commission emphasized that, The basic problem is to determine how far it is desirable to permit the loss distributing function of tort law to apply to public entities without unduly frustrating or interfering with the desirable purposes for which such entities exist. (Law Revision Com. Recommendations, supra, at p. 810, italics added.) Rape, of course, is no accident. It results from an individual's conscious decision to commit the outrageous act despite all moral and legal sanctions. Hence, it cannot be prevented in the way a city might train its officers in safe driving. Rape is a serious crime punishable by imprisonment (Pen. Code, งง 261, 264), and a compensable civil wrong as well. We assume such considerations informed the John R. lead opinion's observation that prevention and deterrence [play] little role in the allocation of responsibility for the sexual misconduct of employees generally.... (48 Cal.3d at p. 451.) Here there is no suggestion that the City negligently failed to screen Officer Schroyer's background and character, or that it failed to exercise due care in training and supervising him. The majority fails to explain what additional measures the City could or should practically have taken to prevent his intentional sexual misconduct. Nor have we any evidence about the costs or benefits of any such measures. Indeed, as the John R. lead opinion observed, excessive restrictions on contacts between public employees and citizens are likely to undermine the employees' public function. (48 Cal.3d at p. 451.) Common sense suggests that what was true for education in John R. has equal or greater validity in the context of law enforcement. The premise that the City should adopt further regulations for police training and conduct also runs afoul of Government Code section 818.2. Section 818.2 provides that [a] public entity is not liable for an injury caused by adopting or failing to adopt an enactment or by failing to enforce any law. The term enactment includes ordinances and regulations. (Gov. Code, ง 810.6.) The majority's inability to suggest how vicarious liability might deter sexual misconduct by public employees demonstrates that we are ill equipped to dictate such matters. As the California Law Revision Commission explained, in many cases decisions made by the legislative and executive branches should not be subject to review in tort suits for damages, for this would take the ultimate decision-making authority from those who are responsible politically for making the decisions. (Law Revision Com. Recommendations, supra, at p. 810.) The remedy for officials who make bad law, who do not adequately enforce existing law, or who do not provide the people with services they desire is to replace them with other officials. ( Id., at p. 817.) Of course, the paradoxical result of the majority's holding is that no matter what the City does, it may be held responsible for a police officer's criminal conduct including offenses such as this rape. The City's police department already has a policy that imposes several reporting requirements on officers who transport members of the opposite sex. (See maj. opn., ante, at p. 218, fn. 10.) The City's assistant chief of police in charge of personnel and training testified that department policy requires a male officer transporting a female arrestee to record the time and mileage of his police vehicle so that the arrestee's whereabouts could be monitored and verified. Department policy also prohibited Officer Schroyer from transporting plaintiff to her residence. Obviously, these policies did not prevent the rape in this case. Under the majority's reasoning, one purpose of vicarious liability in this case would be to encourage the City to adopt further, undefined measures. By adopting the rules then in effect, the City, however, may have done all that it could reasonably do without imposing an undue burden on the police's resources and mission โ the same concern expressed in John R. Indeed, if the City did not act reasonably, it could have been found negligent. Plaintiff, however, dismissed her cause of action for negligence, thereby indicating that the City had done all it could reasonably be expected to do. Plaintiff fails to propose any regulation that would be effective without being unreasonably restrictive on effective law enforcement. The majority's treatment of the regulations adopted by the City is self-contradictory. At one point, the majority approvingly notes a rule adopted by the San Francisco Police Department relating to the transport of females by male officers. The majority asserts this rule illustrates the type of measure that a law enforcement agency can take to reduce the incidence of sexual assaults by police officers on duty. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 215, fn. 7.) Only a few paragraphs later, the majority notes that the City has a similar regulation. Thus, the effect of the majority's holding is that the City is liable despite its adoption of measures vicarious liability is designed to encourage. [1] The proper question is whether vicarious liability would deter future misconduct without undue adverse consequences for the police function. If we impose liability, the City has two choices: (1) It can conclude it has already done all that it can reasonably do and accept the fact that errant officers might on occasion rape citizens, thereby subjecting the City to vicarious liability. If this is the result, vicarious liability has no deterrent effect. (2) Alternatively, the City can take measures beyond those already adopted. It requires little common sense to imagine that such measures might lead to the same result disapproved in John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438 โ undue interference with the City's ability to perform its mission of providing police protection. In rejecting vicarious liability for a teacher's sexual molestation of a child, the John R. lead opinion explained that, Although it is unquestionably important to encourage both the careful selection of these employees and the close monitoring of their conduct, such concerns are, we think, better addressed by holding school districts to the exercise of due care in such matters and subjecting them to liability only for their own direct negligence in that regard. Applying the doctrine of respondeat superior to impose, in effect, strict liability in this context would be far too likely... to induce districts to impose such rigorous controls on activities of this nature that the educational process would be negatively affected. ( Id., at p. 451.) The same reasoning applies with equal force in this case. Whether vicarious liability will have a deterrent effect without undue impediment to a public function depends on what measures a public entity has already taken, what additional measures it can take, and what the effects of those measures will likely be. The majority's holding will allow liability in future cases regardless of whether it will help attain the goal of deterrence or whether it will unduly restrict an essential public function. At a minimum, the question whether vicarious liability is appropriate should depend on the particular facts of each case. In John R., even Justice Kaufman, who vigorously dissented in favor of vicarious liability, explained that, Respondeat superior is a fact-specific determination; a holding adverse to the district would necessarily be limited to the uniquely compelling facts of this case. (48 Cal.3d at p. 465 (conc. and dis. opn. of Kaufman, J.), italics added.) By contrast, the majority result here is absolute and not tethered to any factual basis.
The John R. lead opinion, supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, concluded that the general goal of compensating accident victims weighed against imposing vicarious liability for a sexual assault. The [sexual] acts here differ from the normal range of risks for which costs can be spread and insurance sought. [Citation.] The imposition of vicarious liability on school districts for the sexual torts of their employees would tend to make insurance, already a scarce resource, even harder to obtain, and could lead to the diversion of needed funds from the classroom to cover claims. ( Id., at p. 451.) The same reasoning applies equally to the present case. Imposing vicarious liability on cities for employee-committed rapes indisputably will increase the cost of insurance and will also decrease its availability. [2] Perhaps to avoid this difficulty, the majority makes an elliptical argument as to legislative intent, stating that, by not enacting governmental immunity for violent police misconduct, the Legislature has demonstrated that vicarious liability is an appropriate method for ensuring victim compensation. However, the Legislature's failure to expressly preclude liability is not a valid indicator that the legislative purpose was to allow such liability. The Legislature has provided that vicarious liability may be imposed only for a public employee's actionable misconduct in the scope ... of employment. Where, as here, the employee's intentional criminal conduct was a spontaneous personal deviation from duty and bore no relationship to his work performance, the Legislature's standard for vicarious liability has not been met. I am not persuaded that ensuring compensation for victims is a dispositive concern in any event. It is a truism to state that ensuring compensation weighs in favor of vicarious liability. The deeper the defendant's pocket, the easier the plaintiff is compensated. If ensuring compensation were the only goal, vicarious liability should apply against all employers in all cases. However, as the result in John R., supra, 48 Cal.3d 438, demonstrates, the sympathetic desire to compensate the injured is not a sufficient basis on which to impose vicarious liability. Our decisions in other areas reinforce this principle. For example, prescription drugs occasionally have grievous, even fatal, side effects upon innocent victims. We recently held, however, that a manufacturer of a defectively designed drug cannot be held strictly liable. ( Brown v. Superior Court (1988) 44 Cal.3d 1049, 1061 [245 Cal. Rptr. 412, 751 P.2d 470].) Writing for a unanimous court in Brown, Justice Mosk explained that despite occasional unfortunate consequences to sympathetic victims, the public interest in the development and availability of prescription drugs weighed against liability without fault. ( Id., at pp. 1061-1065.) Similarly, in Belair v. Riverside County Flood Control Dist. (1988) 47 Cal.3d 550, 564-565 [253 Cal. Rptr. 693, 764 P.2d 1070], we held that strict liability was not appropriate in an inverse condemnation action for property damaged by public flood control projects. We found, in effect, that the desire to compensate individual injuries was outweighed by important public need for such projects. The public has equally compelling interests in adequate law enforcement and preservation of public funds. A ruling that the public must bear the cost of all police misconduct merely because the public benefits from law enforcement is inconsistent with the spirit of Brown and Belair.