Opinion ID: 2736698
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Direct and Continuous Contact

Text: Here, appellants contend that the District established direct and continuous contact with appellants sufficient to establish a special relationship because it recruited and evaluated prospective firefighters. Specifically, appellants urge, much as they did in the Superior Court, that Allen (1) had direct and continuing contacts with the District because he applied to FEMS in March of 2006, approximately eighteen months before the PAT test, (2) signed a ―Letter of Intent‖ in April of 2006 to participate in the entry-level Firefighter Written Examination, (3) completed and passed the examination the following month, (4) was provided 18 an ―Initial Notice‖ by the District in September of 2007, and (5) was invited to participate in the PAT test on October 14, 2007. As noted above, as many as two dozen applicants were assembled for physical screening. All were subjected to the same scrutiny before the PAT began, and then Allen suffered pain and difficulty breathing. Medical aid was summoned, just as if he had been overcome with pain on a nearby street. It is from this that we are asked to declare an exception to the public duty doctrine by virtue of a special relationship between Allen, his nearly two dozen peers, the more than 100 prospective firefighters that participate in the PAT every year, and the medics onscene performing the screening. In order to establish a special relationship, appellants have the burden to show direct or continuing contact between Allen and FEMS. Klahr, supra, 576 A.2d at 720. Appellants attempt to show that Allen established a special relationship for his emergency situation by his repeated contacts with the District more than a year (and up to a year-and-a-half) earlier. As the trial court here observed, ―any individual could have applied to be a firefighter and the District would have corresponded with that person to the same extent that it corresponded with Eric Allen.‖ See Nealon v. District of Columbia, 669 A.2d 685, 693 (D.C. 19 1995) (―A party must show that such contact was different from the type of contact that the District has with the general public‖ (citing Powell v. District of Columbia, 602 A.2d 1123, 1130 (D.C. 1992)). If the District had effectively made a promise to protect Allen, that promise would have applied equally to the more than one hundred other contenders who participate in the PAT every year, and the two dozen PAT participants that day. This would require either having over two dozen special relationships that day and more than one hundred over the course of the year, as to each applicant being screened (which is not practical or possible), or holding that the response to the sudden disability by the ones initially called upon created that relationship. By definition of a special relationship, that is not practicable or legally possible. Hines, supra, 580 A.2d at 136 (―Our case law makes it clear that the mere fact that an individual has emerged from the general public and become an object of the special attention of public employees does not create a relationship which imposes a special legal duty.‖); cf. Varner, supra, 891 A.2d 260, 276 (D.C. 2006) (police presence on campus of Gallaudet University, and promise to protect some 2,000 students could not create 2,000 special relationships without ―nullify[ing] the [public duty] doctrine itself‖). A government functions through people, usually its citizens. Thus, the primary task for its leaders (after they are chosen) is to recruit and evaluate those 20 potentially available to facilitate the governmental role of providing public services. An emergency resulting thereafter from the provision of emergency services is insufficient to engender a special relationship. More specifically, appellants‘ claim that Allen established direct or continuing contact with the District through his actions as a prospective employee must also fail. See Flemmings v. District of Columbia, 719 A.2d 963, 964 (D.C. 1998) (rejecting, in a case involving a police officer who was shot by his girlfriend, who was also a police officer, the argument that employment by the District created a special relationship with the District). Appellants cannot, without more, show direct or continuous contact by relying on what Allen did several months, or more than a year earlier, to show that there was a special relationship. As we stated in Wanzer, supra: Even a series of contacts over a period of time between a public agency and an injured or endangered person is not enough to establish a special relationship, absent some showing that the agency assumed a greater duty to that person than the duty owed to the public at large. If it were otherwise, then the city would be potentially liable for ‗every oversight, omission, or blunder‘ of its officials — a liability which potentially could so deplete the resources necessary to provide police protection, fire protection, and ambulance service as to result in the elimination of those services altogether. 21 580 A.2d at 132 (citation omitted); accord Powell, supra, 602 A.2d at 1130-31 (―[M]ere contacts are insufficient in the absence of evidence of a special duty . . . [We] require[] . . . proof of a type of contact different from that of the District with the general public, . . . [and] proof of justifiable reliance.‖). Thus, appellants‘ proffer of such remote contacts fails to show how EMTs responding to Allen‘s emergency had somehow established a special relationship with him. Even assuming arguendo that appellants could claim that a special relationship was established between himself and the District (specifically, FEMS recruitment personnel) while he was acting as a prospective FEMS employee, that special relationship would not also encompass the alleged EMT errors during Allen‘s medical emergency. Cf. Stoddard v. District of Columbia, 623 A.2d 1152, 1153-54 (D.C. 1993) (concluding that even though some parents could prove that they justifiably relied on presence of school crossing-guards, child without parent who crossed street some two football fields from crosswalk could not claim special relationship); Forsman, supra, 580 A.2d at 1318 (concluding that even if government agent‘s assistance in one matter was sufficient to create special relationship in that matter, it was not sufficient to create special relationship in entirely different matter). Nor do appellants claim in their brief that the EMTs 22 responsible for transporting Allen in the basic life-support unit were the source of a special relationship between Allen and the District. Finally, appellants argue forcefully that Allen‘s emergency was not a ―911 emergency call case.‖ As appellants state in their brief, and as the record reflects, despite any on-scene assessment of Allen by EMTs, FEMS personnel had to radio for a basic-life support unit to transport Allen to a hospital, which did not arrive until several minutes later, much like a regular emergency situation. Despite the presence of EMTs Mason and Johnson on scene at the PAT, we are not prepared to distinguish this case from ―emergency services cases‖ strictly because FEMS personnel radioed for a basic life support unit rather than dialing 911 for emergency services like a regular citizen. See Hines, supra, 580 A.2d at 136 (concluding ―actions that are a necessary part of the on-scene responsibility of government agents subject to the public duty doctrine add[] nothing to the general duty owed the public and fail[] to create a relationship which imposes a special legal duty.‖) (alterations in original) (internal quotation marks omitted); accord Wanzer, supra, 580 A.2d at 132 (―A one-time call to 911 for help does not establish a special relationship.‖). In an emergency context, we explicitly deny the jury the opportunity to judge the actions of EMTs in hindsight in the absence of affirmative negligence (i.e., affirmative action that worsens the condition of the 23 individual receiving emergency services). See Johnson, supra, 580 A.2d at 142, 143.