Opinion ID: 2670611
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Negligence of County

Text: The County argues that the district court erred in determining that it was liable because it did not have an adequate sign-inspection policy. Evidence established that the County did not have a written policy or a set schedule for conducting sign inspections. The court determined that the County’s signinspection procedures were so inadequate as to give the County constructive notice of the missing sign. The County argues that the court erred in determining that the County’s sign-inspection procedures were a proximate cause of Hall’s damages.
[8,9] In actions brought under the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, an appellate court will not disturb the factual findings of the trial court unless they are clearly wrong.17 When determining the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the trial court’s judgment, it must be considered in the light most favorable to the successful party; every controverted fact must be resolved in favor of such party, and it is entitled to the benefit of every inference that can be deduced from the evidence.18
at Trial The Lancaster County engineering department maintained over 800 miles of arterial roads in the county. Employees of the engineering department were trained to look for damaged or “down” signs while performing their work duties. As one employee testified, “[P]atrol operators . . . out running the roads . . . are [the County’s] first line of defense.” The sheriff’s office also notified the County of signs that were missing. If a stop sign was missing, the County tried to replace it as soon as possible. Troy Foster, a laborer for the Lancaster County engineering department, mows ditches along the county roads. Foster 17 Blaser v. County of Madison, 285 Neb. 290, 826 N.W.2d 554 (2013). 18 Ginapp v. City of Bellevue, 282 Neb. 1027, 809 N.W.2d 487 (2012). Nebraska Advance Sheets HALL v. COUNTY OF LANCASTER 981 Cite as 287 Neb. 969 makes it to each “spot” in his area about twice a year, and he mows each area once a year. Foster testified that when he first began mowing, the district supervisor for the southeast area of Lancaster County told him to look for damaged or “down” signs while performing his job and to call the supervisor if such a sign was found. Foster testified that during times of inclement weather or when he was not otherwise mowing, his duty would be “to go around and look for signs that are down, leaning, any kind of repairs that need to be done.” He testified that signs are inspected “during our daily business or, you know, as we are going from place to place, we check signs then.” There was no pattern that he would follow, and he would not know if a fellow employee had gone to the same place. Foster did not make any record of where he had been to look for signs. Foster testified that he was not given a map or chart showing the location of signs within the county, but he also testified that at one time, employees were given maps showing “by the sections” where signs should be. Employees of the Lancaster County engineering department testified regarding their most recent work at the intersection prior to the August 24, 2009, accident. Foster had last mowed near the intersection on June 24, and he testified that the stop sign was present at that time. Rick DeBoer, who performs general road maintenance for the County in the spring and summer months, graded South 25th Street to Gage Road and beyond on August 17. He testified that he automatically checks for signs while grading, that he would have done so on that day, and that he did not remember the stop sign being down. If it had been down, DeBoer would have immediately called it in or fixed it. An employee with the Lancaster County engineering department maintains a computer database of all the signs owned by Lancaster County which includes when the signs have been replaced. The database also tracks why a sign is replaced, including, for example, routine maintenance, installation of a new sign, or the sign was stolen or vandalized. Each sign is replaced every 10 years. Every year, an employee runs a query through the database which results in a list of signs to be replaced that year. Nebraska Advance Sheets 982 287 NEBRASKA REPORTS
Court Findings The district court found the County to be negligent. The court stated that the County did not take reasonable steps to ensure that the stop sign was in place and that a collision at the intersection was foreseeable in the absence of a stop sign. The court observed that there was no policy in place for routine or more frequent inspections during the months that the intersection was rendered “blind” by mature corn. The court noted that no records of traffic control device inspections were kept by employees who routinely worked in the area, even though employees kept records of what areas were mowed and what roads were maintained, and that there was no record of the route taken or observations made during inclementweather inspections. The district court found that the County would have discovered the stop sign was missing had it carried out a reasonable inspection and that the absence of a regular inspection, particularly during the high-risk time of year, was not reasonable. The court further found that “the inspections which were conducted were not designed to assure a reasonable inspection of the traffic control devices of the county. They were only conducted haphazardly, in inclement weather, without a map of where devices were located and without a search pattern that assured complete inspection.” The district court considered the foreseeable nature of Aden’s and Hall’s conduct. The court stated that it was foreseeable that drivers on Gage Road and South 25th Street would not slow to the extremely slow speeds necessary to avoid a collision and that it was foreseeable that the risk of collision rises significantly at the time of the year the collision occurred. The court found the County liable, stating that Hall could have stopped at the intersection and avoided the collision if the stop sign had been in place.
The district court correctly recognized that the claim against the County based upon the missing stop sign was premised Nebraska Advance Sheets HALL v. COUNTY OF LANCASTER 983 Cite as 287 Neb. 969 upon the County’s failure to discover the absence of the sign “within a reasonable time after actual or constructive notice”19 to the County. The court also correctly recognized that there was no evidence of actual notice to the County. But the court reasoned that constructive notice could be found in the absence of a sign-inspection policy. We disagree. [10] In order to recover in a negligence action, a plaintiff must show a legal duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, a breach of such duty, causation, and damages.20 For purposes of this opinion, we will assume, without deciding, that the County breached a duty by failing to have a sign-inspection policy. Once the County elected to erect a stop sign, it was required to maintain it in conformance with the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (Manual).21 With regard to maintenance of traffic signs, the Manual provides in part: To assure adequate maintenance, a schedule for inspecting (both day and night), cleaning, and replacing signs should be established. Employees of highway, law enforcement, and other public agencies whose duties require that they travel on the roadways should be encouraged to report any damaged, deteriorated, or obscured signs at the first opportunity. The above provision is labeled as a “[g]uidance,” which the Manual defines as “a statement of recommended, but not mandatory, practice in typical situations, with deviations allowed if engineering judgment or engineering study indicates the deviation to be appropriate.” Notably, the Manual does not prescribe a frequency for the inspection of signs. [11-13] Determination of causation is ordinarily a matter for the trier of fact.22 By finding the County liable, the district court determined that it was a proximate cause of the damages. A proximate cause is a cause that produces a result in a natural and continuous sequence and without which the result 19 See § 13-910(9). 20 Blaser, supra note 17. 21 See § 60-6,121. 22 Brandon v. County of Richardson, 261 Neb. 636, 624 N.W.2d 604 (2001). Nebraska Advance Sheets 984 287 NEBRASKA REPORTS would not have occurred.23 To establish proximate cause, the plaintiff must meet three basic requirements: (1) Without the negligent action, the injury would not have occurred, commonly known as the “but for” rule; (2) the injury was a natural and probable result of the negligence; and (3) there was no efficient intervening cause.24 In actions brought pursuant to the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, this court has, on occasion, reversed the judgment of the district court with respect to causation despite the generally deferential standard of review. In Brandon v. County of Richardson,25 the trial court found the victim to be contribu­orily negligent, but we reversed that finding and t stated that the record failed to show that the victim’s conduct was a proximate cause. We reasoned, in part, that “[t]he record does not show that had [the victim] kept law enforcement accurately informed of her whereabouts or returned for the second interview . . . the result would have been different.”26 And in Koncaba v. Scotts Bluff County,27 we reversed a trial court’s judgment in the plaintiff’s favor after determining that the record established, as a matter of law, that the plaintiff’s decedent was contribu­orily negligent and that such negligence t was a proximate cause of the accident. On this record, no reasonable fact finder could conclude that the County’s failure to have a sign-inspection policy was a proximate cause of the accident. Hall and Norris had the burden to show that if the County had established a proper procedure for inspecting its signs, it would have discovered the missing stop sign and replaced it before the accident occurred. But there is no evidence to establish how long the stop sign was missing or how frequently sign inspections should be conducted under the circumstances. Thus, Hall and Norris cannot establish that the sign was missing long enough that it would 23 Stacy v. Great Lakes Agri Mktg., 276 Neb. 236, 753 N.W.2d 785 (2008). 24 Radiology Servs. v. Hall, 279 Neb. 553, 780 N.W.2d 17 (2010). 25 Brandon, supra note 22. 26 Id. at 667-68, 624 N.W.2d at 627. 27 Koncaba v. Scotts Bluff County, 237 Neb. 37, 464 N.W.2d 764 (1991). Nebraska Advance Sheets HALL v. COUNTY OF LANCASTER 985 Cite as 287 Neb. 969 have been discovered pursuant to a sign-inspection procedure. And because the Manual does not mandate any frequency of inspection, liability in this case cannot be fairly attributed to the County’s lack of a formal policy for sign inspections. As a matter of law, the record fails to show that the County’s failure to have a sign-inspection policy was a proximate cause of the accident.
Because there was no evidence to establish that the County’s failure to have a sign-inspection policy was a proximate cause of the accident, we reverse the judgment of the district court finding the County liable and apportioning fault to it. We remand the cause to the district court to apportion the County’s share of negligence between Hall and Norris.28