Court Opinion

ID: 9518220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:47:24.326924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:27:48.895625
License: Public Domain

STATON, Judge,
concurring.
I concur, and take this opportunity to highlight the limited nature of the public/private duty analysis contained in Mullin v. Municipal City of South Bend, 639 N.E.2d 278 (Ind.1994).
In Mullin our supreme court adopted a three part test to determine whether a governmental agency owes a private duty to a particular plaintiff, as opposed to a duty to the public generally. The court held that there will be a private duty imposed on the government only where each of three elements. are present:
(1) an explicit assurance by the municipality, through promises or actions, that it would act on behalf of the injured party;
(2) knowledge on the part of the municipality that inaction could lead to harm; and
f (3) justifiable and detrimental reliance by the injured party on the municipality's affirmative undertaking.
Mullin, swpra, at 284. The court explained further that "the relationship between the *488governmental entity and the injured person must be such that the governmental entity has induced the injured person justifiably to rely on its taking action for the benefit of that particular person to his detriment." Id. The underlying rational for imposing a duty on the government in such a situation is that "where the governmental entity is aware of the plight of a particular individual and leads that person to believe that governmental rescue services will be used, and the individual detrimentally relies on that promise, it would be unfair to leave that individual worse off than if the individual had not sought assistance from the government at all." Id. at 284-85.
Application of the public/private duty analysis of Mullin is limited to situations of the government's failure to act. Henshilwood v. Hendricks County, 653 N.E.2d 1062, 1067 (Ind.Ct.App.1995), trans. denied. More specifically, Mullin has been used only in the context of the failure of emergency services to respond to a calamity. See Koher v. Dial, 653 N.E.2d 524 (Ind.Ct.App.1995), reh. denied, trams. denied (heart attack victim waiting for an ambulance); Plummer v. Bd. of Com'rs of St. Joseph, 653 N.E.2d 519 (Ind.Ct. App.1995), trams. demied (drowning child awaiting rescue by lifeguards).
In this case, Mullin is inapplicable because the Willises do not allege that they suffered an injury due to inaction by the Warren Township Fire Department ("WTFD"), a municipal emergency service. The Willises misdirect their application of Mullin, attempting to use Mullin to establish a duty to extinguish a fire in a non-negligent manner, as opposed to using Mullin to measure whether a duty existed to respond to a fire by dispatching firefighting units to the Willis' home. Whether the WTFD had a duty to extinguish the fire in a non-negligent manner is the dispute in this case. Mullin, however, applies only to the separate question of what duty a governmental agency might have to dispatch emergency services to the scene of a calamity. As that question has no bearing on this case, neither does Mullin.