Court Opinion

ID: 9757547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:45:29.819125+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:40.707608
License: Public Domain

*152Johnson, J.,
¶ 17. dissenting. I cannot agree that the Legislature intended § 1015(c) of the emergency vehicle statute to deny compensation to innocent bystanders who suffer personal injury or property damage as the result of the negligence of police, fire truck, or ambulance drivers responding to an emergency — but that is the effect of the public policy implemented by the majority opinion. Although the .majority quite rightly disagrees, in a footnote, with the State’s argument that it is appropriate for emergency responders to take “calculated risks” when driving to the scene of an emergency, it holds that the State cannot be liable for emergency responders doing just that, as the state trooper did here. The trooper was responding to an emergency call and, thus, rather than take precaution when the car ahead of him slowed down, he took the calculated risk that the driver intended to pull over to the right. Instead, the car turned left into a driveway just as the trooper tried to pass.
¶ 18. This is the second case we have had before us recently, with almost identical facts, in which state troopers have crashed into cars ahead of them while on their way to emergencies. In the previous case, which settled before we had a chance to resolve it, see Tuller v. Armitage, Docket No. 2002-353, the state trooper, while traveling at a high rate of speed down a residential street, crashed into the plaintiffs vehicle as she attempted to turn left into her driveway. Both vehicles traveled some distance before coming to a stop, with the cruiser ending up on top of the plaintiffs vehicle. The jury awarded the plaintiff nearly $500,000 to compensate her for her permanently disabling injuries. Under the standard adopted by the majority today, it is unlikely that the Tuller case would have even reached the jury, and thus the plaintiff would have been without recourse against the presumably negligent actor.
¶ 19. In both instances, only the nature of the troopers’ errands took these cases out of the ordinary realm of mistakes by governmental actors. The central issue in these cases is: who should pay — innocent bystanders or negligent emergency responders — when governmental officials, or those authorized by the government to act in an emergency, make a mistake? In a general way, the Legislature has already decided that the State should pay. By enacting the Vermont Tort Claims Act, 12 V.S.A. §§ 5601-5606, the Legislature waived sovereign immunity and permitted suit against the State for the negligence of its employees engaged in ministerial duties within the scope of their employment, at least when a private analog exists. See Sabia v. State, 164 Vt. 293, 298, 669 A.2d 1187, 1191 (1995); Denis Bail Bonds, Inc. v. *153State, 159 Vt. 481, 485-86, 622 A.2d 495, 498 (1993). In my view, this Act and our prior common law regarding the duty of emergency vehicle operators — which imposes upon those operators a duty of due care under the circumstances presented — has struck the proper balance between protecting public safety and allowing emergency responders to do their job.
¶ 20. In contrast, the majority’s holding effectively immunizes emergency responders — and the governmental agencies that employ them — from liability for their conduct in operating emergency vehicles.3 Today’s decision represents a dramatic shift away from the policy set *154forth in our common law and Tort Claims Act, with the result that the mistakes of emergency responders are borne by the unfortunate victims of the emergency response system, rather than by society as a whole — the beneficiary of the system. Nothing in the language of 23 V.S.A. § 1015(c) requires this result. Accordingly, I dissent.
¶ 21. Over sixty years ago, we endorsed the notion “ ‘that a sound public policy requires that public officers and employees shall be held accountable for their negligent acts in the performance of their official duties, to those who suffer injury by reason of their misconduct.’” Ferraro v. Earle, 105 Vt. 243, 246, 164 A. 886, 887 (1933) (quoting Florio v. Jersey City, 129 A. 470, 472 (N.J. 1925)). In Ferraro, a fire truck operator drove through a red light and struck another vehicle in an intersection, injuring a passenger in the other vehicle. This Court was asked to construe a statute providing, in relevant part, that emergency vehicles had the right of way over other vehicles at all times. The Court concluded that although driving the fire truck through the intersection against the light was not negligence as a matter of law, the fire truck operator was not privileged to proceed in disregard of the rights of others. Id. at 247, 164 A. at 888; accord Reid v. Abbiatti, 113 Vt. 233, 235, 32 A.2d 133, 135 (1943). Rather, according to the Court, the operator’s “conduct must be judged by the situation and conditions confronting” the fire truck operator, including the exigency of the occasion. Id. at 247-48, 164 A. at 888 (“Due care is care commensurate with the circumstances calling for its exercise.”). That is, the operator “was bound to exercise the care of a prudent person, who was driving a fire truck to a fire at the place and under the circumstances here disclosed.” Id. at 248, 164 A. at 888.
¶ 22. Nothing in our emergency vehicle statute, which was enacted in 1972, alters the flexible negligence standard espoused by this Court in Ferraro and recognized by many other courts construing similar statutes. See, e.g., Tomcsik v. United States, 720 F. Supp. 588, 592-93 (E.D. Mich. 1989) (conduct of emergency responder should be compared to that of reasonably prudent person discharging duties under like circumstances; existence of emergency is one of several factors that must be reviewed in determining whether officer’s actions were reasonable). In relevant part, § 1015 of Title 23 provides as follows:
(a) The driver of an authorized emergency vehicle, when responding to an emergency call or when responding to, but not returning from, a fire alarm and a law enforcement officer operating an authorized emergency vehicle in fresh pursuit of a suspected violator of the law:
*155(1) may park or stand contrary to the provisions of this chapter;
(2) may proceed past a red or stop signal or stop sign, but only after slowing down as may be necessary for safe operation;
(3) shall come to a full stop when approaching a school bus which is flashing red lights and may proceed only when the flashing red lights are extinguished;
(4) may exceed the maximum speed limits;
(5) may disregard regulations governing direction of movement or turning in specified directions.
(b) The exemptions granted to an authorized emergency vehicle apply only when the vehicle is making use of audible or4 visual signals meeting the requirements of this title.
(c) The foregoing provisions shall not relieve the driver of an authorized emergency vehicle from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons, nor shall such provisions protect the driver from the consequences of his reckless disregard of the safety of others.
(Emphasis added.)
¶ 23. Without even suggesting that § 1015(c) is ambiguous, the majority construes the provision as requiring plaintiffs who are injured by emergency vehicle operators to prove that the driver acted recklessly in operating the emergency vehicle, thereby overturning our longstanding common law and establishing a significant exception to our Tort Claims Act with respect to state employees. The majority arrives at this holding based on (1) our decision in Morais v. Yee, 162 Vt. 366, 648 A.2d 405 (1994), supposedly construing § 1015(c) to require plaintiffs to prove recklessness on the part of emergency responders, *156and (2) the “well-reasoned” decision in Saarinen v. Kerr, 644 N.E.2d 988 (N.Y. 1994). The majority’s reliance is misplaced in both cases.
¶ 24. The issue of whether § 1015(c) requires plaintiffs to show negligence or recklessness on the part of emergency responders was neither raised nor addressed in Moráis, a case in which the parents of a motorcyclist killed in a high-speed chase sued, among others, the state troopers involved in the chase. If anything, we implied in Moráis that § 1015(c) required only a showing of negligence by noting that “[o]ther jurisdictions have recognized a duty to conduct high-speed ..chases with due regard for the safety of all persons under substantially similar statutes.” Morais, 162 Vt. at 374, 648 A.2d at 410. The majority relies on the fact that we remanded the case for the jury to determine whether the defendants acted with reckless disregard in conducting a high-speed chase. See id. at 375, 648 A.2d at 411. Use of this language may reflect the fact that only three individual defendants remained in the case, and that two of those defendants were state troopers, thereby requiring plaintiffs to prove at least gross negligence pursuant to the Tort Claims Act. See 12 V.S.A. § 5602(a)-(b) (exclusive right of action based on conduct of state employees acting within scope of employment is against State, unless claim is that employees acted with gross negligence or willful misconduct). In any event, Moráis plainly did not address or resolve the issue raised here today.
¶25. Regarding the majority’s reliance on the reasoning in Saarinen, “most courts have interpreted provisions such as [§ 1015(c)] to impose liability for negligence.” City of Amarillo v. Martin, 971 S.W.2d 426, 429 (Tex. 1998) (citing cases). Moreover, “nearly all” jurisdictions construing the conflicting clauses contained in provisions such as § 1015(c) have concluded that the language is ambiguous and conducted the appropriate statutory interpretation. D. Meinecke, Assessment of Police Conduct During High-Speed Chases in State Tort Liability Cases: The Effects of Fiser v. City of Ann Arbor and Rogers v. City of Detroit, 46 Wayne L. Rev. 325, 354 (2000). Nonetheless, without even acknowledging the ambiguity in § 1015(c), the majority adopts the implausible reasoning in Saarinen that the Legislature intended the “due regard” clause in § 1015(c) to be a mere “general admonition” to emergency providers to drive safely, while the actual standard to be applied by courts is the “reckless disregard” standard in the second clause; otherwise, so the reasoning goes, the second clause would be mere surplusage. 644 N.E.2d at 991-92; accord City of Amarillo, 971 S.W.2d at 430. The irony of this position is that it construes § 1015(c) to prevent the second clause of the provision from *157being mere surplusage, but in doing so, makes the first clause mere surplusage.
¶26. I find it incredible that the Legislature intended the phrase “duty to drive with due regard” in § 1015(c) to be a meaningless cautionary warning amounting to nothing more than finger wagging, and, at the same time intended the “reckless disregard” language to overrule our longstanding common law and to alter its policy in the Tort Claims Act. See In re S.B.L., 150 Vt. 294, 301-02, 553 A.2d 1078, 1083 (1988) (“A statute can be construed as changing the common law only where that intent is expressed clearly and unambiguously.”). In two separate clauses, § 1015(c) explicitly states that emergency-responders neither shall be relieved of “the duty to drive with due regard” (emphasis added), “nor” shall they be protected “from the consequences” of their reckless disregard for the safety of others. Use of the word “nor” to commence the second clause suggests that both clauses have distinct meanings. Rather than attributing no real meaning to the first clause, as the majority has done, a far more reasonable interpretation of § 1015(c) is that emergency operators are held to a negligence standard of care with respect to civil liability, and further are not protected from criminal liability or convictions for motor vehicle violations for their reckless conduct.
¶27. Before 1973, police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks were granted the right of way over other vehicles, 23 V.S.A. § 1033 (1959 version), and were permitted to ignore speed restrictions as long as they operated their vehicles with due regard for the safety of others, 23 V.S.A. § 1143 (1959 version). Notwithstanding these statutory privileges, our ease law still required emergency responders to exercise due care. See Ferraro, 105 Vt. at 247, 164 A at 888. In 1972, the Legislature comprehensively revised the statutes governing the operation of motor vehicles. See 1971, No. 258 (Adj. Sess.). Among other things, Act 258 repealed §§ 1033 and 1143 and replaced them with two new provisions for emergency vehicles. See id. §§ 1, 3. The right-of-way privilege enjoyed by emergency vehicles under the former § 1033 was codified in 23 V.S.A. § 1050(a), which remains in effect today, obligating all drivers to yield to emergency vehicles. That obligation does not “relieve the operator of an authorized ... vehicle from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons using the highway,” however. See id. § 1050(c).
¶ 28. This same policy was reflected in § 1015, which was also part of Act 258. Section 1015 exempts drivers of emergency vehicles from *158complying with certain rules of the road, but does not relieve them of the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of others. The majority questions the need for stating a negligence, standard in § 1015 if such a standard had already been established by our case law. In my view, § 1015 sets forth a more comprehensive set of guidelines governing the conduct of emergency responders with respect to specific traffic laws. “The effect of the statute is merely to displace the conclusive presumption of negligence that ordinarily arises from the violation of traffic rules,” not to “relieve operators of emergency vehicles from their general duty to exercise due care for the safety of others.” Tetro v. Town of Stratford, 458 A.2d 5, 9 (Conn. 1983); accord Peak v. Ratliff, 408 S.E.2d 300, 305 (W. Va. 1991); see also Tomcsik, 720 F. Supp. at 592 (“even if excused by the statutes from obeying all of the traffic ordinances, emergency vehicles must be operated with due regard for the safety of others”).
¶ 29. As for the “reckless disregard” language, reckless driving was also addressed in other sections of Act 258. The reckless driving statute adopted in Act 258 provided that persons who operated motor vehicles in wanton or willful disregard for the safety of persons or property were subject to fines and imprisonment. See 1971, Act 258 (Adj. Sess.), § 3 (codified at 23 V.S.A. § 1091(b) (1973) (repealed 1996)). Thus, if a driver of an emergency vehicle caused injury to persons or property through the reckless operation of the vehicle, § 1015(c) did not protect the driver from criminal prosecution. Considering § 1015 in the context of related statutes, it is reasonable to- conclude that the Legislature intended subsection (c) to maintain a due care standard for civil liability, but to make clear that emergency responders were not protected from criminal liability when they acted recklessly. This construction of the statute fulfills the legislative policy we articulated in Moráis — that emergency responders must have the ability to act swiftly when answering emergency calls, but may not engage in conduct that threatens public safety. See 162 Vt. at 374, 648 A.2d at 410 (explaining that § 1015(c) embodies policy of balancing law enforcement duties with duty of care to general public). Moreover, unlike the majority’s construction of § 1015(c), this interpretation gives real effect to every word in the provision.
¶ 30. If the Legislature had intended § 1015(c) to make emergency responders liable for only their reckless conduct, they certainly knew how to do so, and, I believe, would have done so more clearly. For instance, in 1984, within a law creating emergency medical services districts empowered to contract for ambulance services, see 24 V.S.A. *159§§ 2651-2688, the Legislature enacted a provision making volunteer personnel who render emergency medical treatment civilly liable for only their “gross negligence or willful misconduct,” 24 V.S.A. § 2687(3). This provision, unlike § 1015(c), unequivocally sets forth a gross negligence or recklessness standard under which those rendering emergency treatment will be held civilly liable. The Legislature could have done the same in § 1015(c), but did not do so.
¶31. This Court should ignore the moral issue interjected by Saarinen and other courts following the New York court’s reasoning — namely, that it is unfair for courts to second-guess split-second decisions that emergency vehicle operators must make when responding to an emergency. In my view, this case presents a liability issue, not a moral one. The question is not whether it is fair to make emergency responders liable for their negligent acts, but rather who should pay when emergency responders make inevitable mistakes — innocent bystanders or the public at large? In other circumstances, our Tort Claims Act requires the public, which benefits generally from governmental services, to pay through the state for the negligent acts of state employees. State employees are individually liable, on the other hand, when they engage in grossly negligent conduct while acting within the scope of their employment. 12 V.S.A. § 5602(a)-(b). Thus, requiring the state to bear the burden of paying for injuries caused by the negligent acts of state employees who are emergency responders would not deter those emergency personnel from acting decisively in responding to emergencies. In short, there is no basis or need to interpret § 1015(c), as the majority has done here, to create an emergency-responder exception to the state’s waiver of sovereign immunity.
¶ 32. The fact that not all emergency vehicle operators are state employees does not alter my view. Those emergency responders who are municipal employees — assuming they are not protected by the governmental-proprietary exception to municipal sovereign immunity — will not, as a practical matter, incur financial loss for their negligent acts while performing duties within the scope of their employment. Morway v. Trombly, 173 Vt. 266, 271, 789 A.2d 965, 969 (2001) (“As a practical matter, municipalities ... purchase insurance and defend and indemnify their employees against liability for judgments based on their acts performed within the scope of their municipal duties.”); see 29 V.S.A. § 1403 (municipalities waive sovereign immunity to extent of insurance coverage). Similarly, even assuming that the individual employees of private ambulance companies licensed to provide *160services within an emergency medical services district created under 24 V.S.A. § 2652 are not state or municipal employees for purposes of civil liability, they will generally not have to bear, personally and individually, the frill financial burden for injuries or property damage resulting from their negligent acts performed within the scope of their employment.
¶ 33. Ironically, the majority’s narrow interpretation of § 1015 prioritizes emergency response time over general public safety to the extent that, in some instances, it may actually prevent the emergency responder from reaching the emergency. Presumably, in this case and the Fuller case recently before this Court, the emergency responders never reached the scene of their respective emergencies. I do not believe that the Legislature intended § 1015(c) to prioritize emergency response time over general public safety, to immunize emergency responders from liability for their negligent acts, or to make innocent bystanders bear the financial burden of those negligent acts. Rather, I believe that the Legislature intended § 1015(c) to maintain the common law flexible negligence standard for emergency responders, but to provide more detailed guidelines concerning the responsibilities of emergency responders with respect to specific traffic laws.
¶ 34. Finally, I believe that the state trooper’s conduct in operating his cruiser in response to the domestic assault call was a ministerial rather than a discretionary act on his part, and thus the State was not immune under 12 V.S.A. § 5601(e)(1) (waiver of sovereign immunity does not apply to conduct involving performance or nonperformance of discretionary duty). The purpose of this exception to the state’s waiver of sovereign immunity is to assure that the courts do not invade the province of the legislative and executive branches by making judgments about legislative or administrative policy decisions through personal injury law. Lane v. State, 174 Vt. 219, 223, 811 A.2d 190, 194 (2002). In this ease, the state trooper’s decisions on how to handle his cruiser while responding to the emergency is not the kind of policy decision that should be precluded from review within the court system. Cf. Morway, 173 Vt. at 273, 789 A.2d at 970 (snowplow operator’s decisions regarding speed of his truck and positioning of his plow were ministerial rather than discretionary acts); Ferraro, 105 Vt. at 245, 164 A. at 887 (firefighter’s operation of fire truck in response to fire was ministerial rather than discretionary act). Because I would hold that neither 23 V.S.A. § 1015(c) nor 12 V.S.A. § 5601(e)(1) precluded plaintiffs’ negligence suit, I would reverse the superior court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the State.
*161¶ 85. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Allen joins this dissent.

 The majority opinion highlights facts in this particular case that downplay the culpability of the state trooper — the trooper attempted to pass in a passing zone while driving the posted speed limit after observing plaintiffs drift to the right without indicating that they were turning left. Yet, the majority acknowledges that a recklessness standard requires a showing of wilful misconduct — that the actor consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm. See State v. Brooks, 163 Vt. 245, 251, 658 A.2d 22, 26 (1995) (endorsing Model Penal Code’s definition of recklessness).
Similarly, other courts that have adopted a recklessness standard under statutes comparable to § 1015(a) have relied on definitions contained in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 500 (1965) or Prosser and Keaton on the Law of Torts § 34 (5th ed. 1984) to require plaintiffs to prove that the emergency responder acted with conscious disregard of a risk so great that the harm was highly probable. See Morris v. Leaf, 534 N.W.2d 388, 391 (Iowa 1995) (plaintiff must show that emergency responder “has intentionally done an act of an unreasonable character in disregard of a risk known to or so obvious that he must be taken to have been aware of it, and so great as to make it highly probable that harm would follow”); Turner v. City of Ruleville, 735 So. 2d 226, 230 (Miss. 1999) (“reckless disregard” encompasses “willful or wanton conduct which requires knowingly and intentionally doing a thing or wrongful act”); Saarinen v. Kerr, 644 N.E.2d 988, 991 (N.Y. 1994) (“reckless disregard” requires plaintiff to prove that emergency responder intentionally acted in conscious disregard of obvious risk so great as to make it highly probable that harm would result); Kuzmics v. Santiago, 389 A.2d 587, 589 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1978) (“reckless disregard” standard requires plaintiff to prove that emergency responder intentionally acted or failed to act in manner that involves high degree of probability of substantial bodily harm to another person).
This standard will rarely be satisfied in situations involving collisions with emergency vehicles, considering that the emergency responders’ operation of their vehicles places their own lives at risk. Indeed, we need look no further than the New York Court of Appeals, whose reasoning the majority adopts today, to see how difficult it is to meet this standard. In Szczerbiak v. Pilat, 686 N.E.2d 1346, 1349 (N.Y. 1997), the court applied the reckless disregard standard set forth in Saarinen in concluding that a police officer was entitled to judgment as a matter of law despite the plaintiffs evidence that the officer, while responding to a report of a fight, accelerated his cruiser at fifty-five-miles-an-hour or more around drivers in a passing lane on a city street before ever activating his emergency lights or siren and struck and killed a child crossing the street on a bicycle.

 Notably, § 11-106 of the Uniform Vehicle Code, from which 23 V.S A. § 1015 is adopted, requires both the audible and visual emergency signals of the emergency vehicle to be operating before the exemptions of the provision will apply. See Unif. Vehicle Code Ann. § 11-106 (1967). Most states have adopted this requirement. See D. Meinecke, Assessment of Police Conduct During High-Speed Chases in State Tort Liability Cases: The Effects of Fiser v. City of Ann Arbor and Rogers v. City of Detroit, 46 Wayne L. Rev. 325, 329 n.13 (2000) (citing Michigan and other state statutes). In this case, the officer did not turn on his siren. He testified that he did not want to alert the perpetrator of the suspected assault that he was coming. If the officer had used his siren, the accident may never have happened.