Court Opinion

ID: 9719316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:48:36.395332+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:05.952153
License: Public Domain

Wilkins, J.
(concurring, with whom Abrams, J., joins). I agree that the public duty rule should no longer be engrafted on the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act. Although I do not concur in many respects with the analysis of cases in the opinion of the Chief Justice, I do agree that the result in Cyran v. Ware, 413 Mass. 452 (1992), has made worthless any continuing attempt at reasoned line-drawing facilitating the establishment of governmental liability in “sufficiently egregious [situations], where the peril [created by a third party] was obvious [to a government agent] and [was] substantial and the class of potential victims was reasonably determinable.” Id. at 472 (Wilkins, J., dissenting, with whom Abrams, J., joined).
No one should rest content that all problems will be solved by the abandonment of the public duty rule. For the four of us who abandon the rule at least prospectively (and, to a degree, for the three of us who believe the rule inapplicable in cases involving active negligence), the new difficult line-drawing will be in the area of causation. Indeed, the results *515in our cases in which the public duty rule has been involved could largely be explained on traditional tort law concepts of causation.
I see no reason to await legislative inaction before implementing the abandonment of the public duty rule. This conclusion is particularly appropriate in this case where three of us believe that the complaint in part alleges a cause of action based on active wrongdoing and that the public duty rule is inapplicable to that extent. The opinion of the Chief Justice, although favoring the plaintiffs’ position prospectively, casts doubt on the plaintiffs’ chances to recover at all under the public duty rule. Although I find the active-passive negligence dichotomy to be inappropriate where a duty already exists, I would at least forthwith uphold the plaintiffs’ active negligence claim. I would additionally free any claim based on a negligent failure to act from the restrictions of the public duty rule. However, because of the views expressed in other opinions, these plaintiffs may not avoid the application of the public duty rule to their claims based on negligent failures to act (at least until the Legislature says otherwise).