Court Opinion

ID: 9731342
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:42:34.676756+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:16.598050
License: Public Domain

GLASSMAN, Justice,
with whom ROBERTS, Justice, joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I join in the remainder of the court’s opinion, I do not agree with the court’s holding in Part III that the individual police officers are entitled to a summary judgment on the ground of absolute immunity under the Maine Tort Claims Act. Because I conclude that the officers’ decision to deny Moore any form of assistance following the arrest of her companion on April 8,1988, cannot, as a matter of law, be reasonably encompassed within the officers’ official duties, I would vacate the summary judgment for the police officers.
The Maine Tort Claims Act provides absolute immunity from civil liability to any governmental employee, including a police officer, for “a discretionary act [that] is reasonably encompassed by the duties of the governmental employee in question.” 14 M.R.S.A. § 8111(1) (Supp.1990). In order to find an individual police officer entitled to discretionary function immunity therefore, we must scrutinize the nature of the alleged police conduct to determine: (1) that the act or omission alleged falls within the core of conduct considered an official police function and (2) that the act or omission was “discretionary” in nature. Absent either finding, the individual police officer will not be entitled to immunity for the alleged conduct. See, e.g., MacKerron v. Madura, 474 A.2d 166, 167 (Me.1984) (police interference with attorney-client relationship outside scope of official duties); Kane v. Anderson, 509 A.2d 656, 657 (Me.1986) (execution of arrest warrant is ministerial, not discretionary act).
In this case, the court focuses entirely on the narrow issue of whether the officers are immune from liability for their refusal to offer Moore a ride in the police cruiser and determines that the officers’ decision is a discretionary function covered by section 8111(1) because the officers were required to use their judgment while acting in furtherance of a departmental policy not to transport citizens. Even assuming this questionable characterization of the nature of that particular “decision,” the court, by its silence, suggests that the officers’ refusal “to offer [Moore] any reasonable alternative, such as requesting the Police Department dispatcher to send a taxicab to the scene of the arrest,” an explicit allegation in Moore’s complaint, is also encompassed within their broader discretionary decision not to offer her a ride. Such a sweeping analysis paints the scope of discretionary immunity far too broadly and raises very troubling implications. Given this carte blanche definition of immunity, one can easily hypothesize a case where the police leave a small child unattended at the scene of an arrest in circumstances where the risk to that child far exceeds the burden on the police officers to act to remove the risk created by their actions. I cannot believe that the Legislature intended section 8111(1) to preclude a civil action against an officer for this type of conduct.
*618Here, the officers’ refusal was based on a police department policy that stated that “citizens shall be transported in departmental vehicles only when necessary to accomplish a police purpose ... done in conformance with departmental policy or at the direction of a commanding officer, immediate supervisor or communications officer.” See Lewiston Police Dept. Manual § 1.09. We have previously found conduct “discretionary” when the governmental employee is given authority to make individualized decisions in any way that the employee deems will advance an explicit and fundamental government policy. See Polley v. Atwell, 581 A.2d 410, 413 (Me.1990) (decision of whether disclosure of particular information in foster care records to prospective foster parents will comport with fundamental state policy of confidentiality is within discretion of DHS caseworker, entitling her to discretionary immunity); see also Miller v. Szelenyi, 546 A.2d 1013, 1021-22 (Me.1988).
Assuming that the police department policy in the present case can be deemed fundamental, which is doubtful, the only discretion possibly authorized by the policy was whether the contemplated use of the patrol car to transport Moore was a “police purpose,” or whether to check in with a supervisor for clearance. The court improperly implies that the police officer might be the arbiter of the scope of the term “police purpose,” a term that presumably has an objective definition not left to the individual officer on patrol and a term that is presumably coextensive with the scope of official police duties. Because Moore was not a person under arrest for any crime, the officers had no discretion but to deny Moore a ride or to contact a supervisor, who would in turn make a decision for them. Such strictly ministerial acts that require at best a small modicum of judgment have never been held entitled to discretionary function immunity. See Kane v. Anderson, 509 A.2d 656, 657 (Me. 1986). The fact finder in this case might conclude that the officers’ implementation of the department policy was a negligently performed ministerial function. Cf id. (officer negligent in manner in which he executed arrest warrant, a purely ministerial act).
Moreover, not all discretionary acts engaged in by police officers are reasonably encompassed within the scope of their authority or duty as law enforcement officers. Because the police may have a “choice,” in nonlegal parlance, whether to offer assistance to citizens in many cases, it does not follow that their refusal to do so qualifies as a “discretionary function” for purposes of the legal definition of immunity under section 8111(1). While commendable, routine offers of assistance to a citizen in peril do not fall within the core group of essential or traditional police functions. 30-A M.R.S.A. § 2671 (Pamph. 1990) (replacing former 30 M.R.S.A. § 2361 (1978)), which enumerates the powers of municipal police officers, specifically provides that “officers may serve criminal and traffic infraction processes and arrest and prosecute offenders of the law.” Certain core police functions, including investigation of crime and arrest, arise from this primary power and duty to enforce the laws, and the principle of immunity is premised on a policy that these core police functions must be fulfilled “without deterrence or intimidation by the fear of personal liability and vexatious suits.” Darling v. Augusta Mental Health Institute, 535 A.2d 421, 425 (Me.1987). Indeed, such police enforcement measures may often incidentally involve some assistance to noncriminal citizens, who have been placed directly at risk by the acts of a person committing or about to commit a criminal offense and who are assisted by the police officers’ detention and arrest of that offender. Absent evidence of a crime, however, a law enforcement officer is under no duty to offer assistance to any person who requests it. Because these offers of assistance are not within the core group of essential police functions, the police officers are not entitled to discretionary immunity for their decision to offer or refuse requests for assistance. The primacy of this functional approach to immunity, which focuses on the character of the act and not the character of the actor, is well estab*619lished. Cf. Burns v. Reed, — U.S. —, -, 111 S.Ct. 1934, 1935-36, 114 L.Ed.2d 547 (1991) (prosecutorial immunity does not encompass prosecutor’s legal advice to police officers because conduct is not “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process” which is at core of prosecutor’s function),
In the present case, the police officers are not entitled to absolute immunity for their alleged decision not to offer even minimal assistance to Moore. Summary judgment is therefore appropriate only if there was no genuine issue of material fact and the officers were entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Saltonstall v. Cumming, 538 A.2d 289, 290 (Me.1988). The question whether the officers owed a duty to Moore is a question of law. See Fish v. Paul, 574 A.2d 1365, 1366 (Me. 1990). Under the common law of negligence, any person who observes another person in circumstances where the risk of harm is reasonably foreseeable may offer assistance to that person, but the law imposes no duty to do so. This rule applies to police officers confronted by situations involving all manner of potential risks to citizens when there is no evidence that a criminal offense has been committed or is about to be committed. However, a duty to give reasonable assistance in order to avoid harm will arise when the person who could offer assistance is the party, who “does an act, and subsequently realizes or should realize that it has created an unreasonable risk of causing physical harm to another.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 321; see also Trusiani v. Cumberland and York Distribs., 538 A.2d 258, 262 n. 4 (Me.1988); Prosser & Keeton, Law of Torts § 56, at 377 (1984). This rule will apply even when .the risk of harm has been created by an innocent or otherwise justifiable act of the police officer. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 322 comment a (1977).
Although the officers’ arrest of the driver in the instant case was clearly a discretionary function that immunizes the officers from civil liability for that act, the official arrest was completed by the time Moore allegedly asked for their assistance. Here, the fact finder may determine that the police officers breached their duty to Moore because they should have realized that their arrest of her companion had subjected Moore to a risk of physical harm, that the risk was unreasonable under the circumstances, and that the measures required to lessen that risk were minimal. Accordingly, I would vacate the summary judgment in favor of the police officers on Moore’s common law negligence claim against those officers.