Opinion ID: 1372176
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Risk of harm general kind of harm to be anticipated.

Text: Upon the application of these rules of law to the facts as alleged by the complaint in this case, I believe that a jury could reasonably find that when the matron responsible for the security of the juvenile detention center permitted and assisted Thompson to enter the detention center at night to visit a young woman being held there with knowledge that he had a close personal relationship with her and that the two of them had previously stolen an automobile together and fled the county, a competent matron or jailer ought reasonably to foresee that [she would] expose another [not only] to an unreasonable risk of harm, in the words of Jefferson Plywood, but to a recognizable high degree of risk of harm, in the words of the opinion by Justice Peterson. More specifically, a jury could reasonably find that under these facts it was not only likely that Thompson would attempt to help his girl friend escape from the detention center and again steal a car and attempt to flee the county, but that it was likely that any police officer who attempted to block their escape or to apprehend them would encounter resistance of such a nature as to expose him to either an unreasonable risk of harm or a recognizable high degree of risk of harm. In other words, jurors, as men and women of the world, could reasonably find that just as danger invites rescue, escape from jail by an inmate, aided by a confederate, invites resistance to capture; that inmates in jails and their confederates who are desperate enough to plan and execute an escape from a jail are also desperate enough to physically resist attempts to block their escape by any means available to them and that, as a result, a police officer who attempts to block an escape will be exposed to both an unreasonable risk of harm and a recognizable high degree of risk of harm. For these same reasons I also believe that a jury could reasonably find from these alleged facts that the stabbing of such a police officer by either the escaping prisoner or his or her confederate was a harm of the general kind to be anticipated. This being so, the question of foreseeability in this case was properly submitted to the jury even if members of this court might believe that the manner in which plaintiff's decedent was killed was bizarre, as in Connolly v. Bressler, supra .