Court Opinion

ID: 9791596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:14:15.262297+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:37.110286
License: Public Domain

RANSOM, Chief Justice (specially concurring). I concur specially to voice my concern with the majority’s statement that: “Reading Section 41-4-6 to waive immunity every time a public employee’s negligence creates a risk of harm for a single individual would subvert the purpose of the Tort Claims Act, which recognizes that government, acting for the public good, ‘should not have the duty to do everything that might be done,’ and limits government liability accordingly.” I am certain that if the operation or maintenance of a public building were to give rise to an unreasonable risk of harm for even a single individual, the immunity granted pursuant to the Act would not apply. I concur because there was no showing that the general prison population reflected anything but the reasonable and expected risks of prison life. The classification of Archibeque did not change the condition of the premises. I see Archibeque’s injuries as having been proximately caused by a discrete administrative decision. As an alternative to releasing Archibeque into the general population, he could have been placed in administrative segregation, a form of protective custody. The risk arose not from a condition of the premises (as with the wild dogs in Castillo or, arguably, the inadequate health care facilities in Silva); it arose from the classification itself. Also, I believe the “physical defect” basis for the decisions in Wittkowski and Gallegos is too narrow. I would not readily be persuaded that a general condition of unreasonable risk from negligent security practices falls outside “operation of a building” in the context of a corrections facility. To focus on words such as “security, custody, and classification” does not aid the analysis. The focus must be on the unreasonable risk of injury arising from operation and maintenance of the premises, in which case there is waiver of immunity, as compared to an administrative act such as the classification of an inmate who is thereby put at risk on premises that are operated and maintained without risk beyond that which is reasonable and expected in prison life. Here, it is telling that Archibeque did not argue that his assailant should have been removed from the general prison population, but only that Archibeque himself should have been placed in administrative segregation.