Court Opinion

ID: 9796573
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:00:19.531433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:37.806842
License: Public Domain

Justice KIDWELL,
specially concurring.
The analysis of the majority opinion appears to reflect the law of Idaho and probably most other jurisdictions. To be more specific, no common law or statutory duty is owed or due to the plaintiffs in this case under the facts presented. Therefore, I have no alternative, but to concur.
However, I am concerned that the factual situation in the present case could be cited as precedent for the proposition that a public official has no civil duty, no matter how hazardous the situation, to take any action to prevent possible injury to members of the public. An example is appropriate to illustrate my concerns: a sheriff in his patrol car sees a hazardous rockslide around a blind curve. Although his radio works, he does not use it to notify those charged with main-' taming the roadway. A person is killed or seriously injured because the rockslide was not removed from the road. In this situation, a question alises as to whether the legal system should impose some minimal duty on a public official charged with a caretaking responsibility. The question of whether there should be a duty looms larger when the hazard is great and the action necessary to rectify the problem is minimal.
The concept of when the legal system does or should impose a legal duty is elusive.
There is a duty if the court says there is a duty; the law, like the Constitution, is what we make it. Duty is only a word with which we state our conclusion that there is or is not to be liability____In the decision whether or not there is a duty, many factors interplay: the hand of history, our ideas of morals and justice, the convenience of administration of the rule, and our social ideas as to where loss should fall.
William L. Prosser, Palsgraf Revisited, 52 Mich. L.Rev. 1, 15 (1953) (footnote omitted).
By analogy, Judge Learned Hand, speaking for the majority in a classic tort case, provides some guidance. See The T.J. Hooper, 60 F.2d 737 (2d Cir.1932). The facts of this case are well known: two tugboats lost them barges and cargoes during a predicted storm in the Atlantic Ocean. Had the tugs been equipped with working radios, the tug masters would have known about the storm and could have likely avoided it. At issue in the case was whether the tugboat owners had a duty to equip the tugs with working radios. Although at the time, only one tugboat line equipped its tugs with radios, the court held that not using available technology to avoid the storm was a cause of the injury sustained by the companies. Therefore, a duty to use the means available to avert an accident existed.
In the present ease, if Sheriff Roskelley had used a communication device to inform the Department of Transportation that a hazard existed on the road, the accident and subsequent litigation could have been prevented. It seems that placing a duty upon Sheriff Roskelley to make a very brief telephone call for the protection of motorists is appropriate.