Court Opinion

ID: 9787077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:10:14.232208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:51.874395
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS,
concurring in the judgment only:
While I would also find the allegations of the complaint insufficient to support a waiver of governmental immunity, I believe the majority's rationale unnecessarily departs from the plain language of the statute and reinterprets our prior holdings in ways with which I cannot agree. I believe that a simple and straightforward reading of the statute places the allegations of the complaint outside the waiver. I therefore join in the judgment of the court but write separately to explain my reasons for doing so.
As a public entity, the school is immune from suit for injuries by operation of the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act, §§ 24-10-101 to -120, 7 C.R.S. (2000) (the "CGIA"), under all cireumstances other than those in which governmental immunity has expressly been waived. $ 24-10-106. As relevant to this case, the sovereign immunity of a public entity is waived in actions for damages for injuries resulting from a "dangerous condition of any public building." § 24-10-*1184106(1)(c). A "dangerous condition," in turn, is defined by the legislature to mean:
a physical condition of a facility or the use thereof which constitutes an unreasonable risk to the health or safety of the public, which is known to exist or which in the exercise of reasonable care should have been known to exist and which condition is proximately caused by the negligent act or omission of the public entity in construct, ing or maintaining such facility, Maintenance does not include any duty to upgrade, modernize, modify, or improve the design or construction of a facility.... A dangerous condition shall not exist solely because the design of any facility is inadequate.
§ 24-10-103(1). When explaining the "dangerous condition" waiver of governmental immunity in the past, this court has consistently articulated the statutory requirements, all of which must be satisfied in order to demonstrate a waiver under section 24-10-106(1)(c), in terms virtually identical to those of the statute. See, e.g., Springer v. City & County of Denver, 13 P.3d 794, 799 (Colo.2000); Walton v. State, 968 P.2d 636, 644 (Colo.1998). For a suit to be within the waiver, we have explained that the injuries must have occurred as the result of (1) a physical condition of a public facility or the use thereof, (2) which constitutes an unreasonable risk to the health or safety of the public; (8) which is known to exist or should have been known to exist in the exercise of reasonable care, and (4) which condition is proximately caused by the negligent act or omission of the public entity in constructing or maintaining the facility. Springer, 13 P.3d at 799; Walton, 968 P.2d at 644.
In its logical sequence, the test therefore requires that the injury have resulted either directly from a physical condition that was proximately caused by a negligent act or omission of the public entity in constructing or maintaining a public building, or from the use of such a physical condition.1 In addition, the physical condition or the particular use of it must have been one that was known, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have been known, and it must have been such as to constitute an unreasonable risk to the health or safety of the public. Whether or not these additional criteria of the test have been met, however, there simply can be no waiver of governmental immunity under this "dangerous condition" provision unless there exists a physical condition that was proximately caused by the public entity's negligence in constructing or maintaining its facility and the injuries in question resulted from that physical condition or its use. § 24-10-108(1).
Although the statute does not define the word "maintaining," we have expressly considered its use in this context and have construed it to have its common meaning of keeping the facility "in the same general state of being, repair, or efficiency as initially constructed." Swieckowski v. City of Fort Collins, 934 P.2d 1380, 1386 (Colo.1997). In rejecting an interpretation very similar to that urged by the Padillas-that "maintaining" a facility should be understood in the sense of merely owning and possessing or keeping a facility that could be used dangerously-we noted the 1992 amendment to the definition of "dangerous condition," making clear that maintenance "does not include any duty to upgrade, modernize, modify, or improve the design or construction of a facility," as well as the comments of the amendment's sponsor to the effect that " 'maintain' was intended by the legislature to mean a duty to restore a facility to the same condition as originally constructed." Id. at 1385. We further noted the statutory caveat that a dangerous condition cannot exist solely because the design of the facility is inadequate. Id.
Nothing on the face of the Padillas' complaint speaks to a physical condition proximately caused by an act or omission in maintaining the building in this sense. The gravamen of the complaint concerns the allegedly improper placement and supervision of the stroller and the entity's failure to make the facility safe for use as a seclusion room by covering the hard tile floor and building a window. Much like the complaint *1185in Swieckowski, these allegations depend for their sufficiency upon a broad definition of "maintain" to include merely keeping the room available without upgrading its condition or improving its design. Under any theory advanced by the Padillas, therefore, their negligence claim does not fall within the statutory waiver for a dangerous condition and is clearly barred by operation of governmental immunity.
In my view, the majority misapplies both the statute and our decisions explaining it. In the majority's words:
[T]o be actionable, the state of the building or use of a state of the building and the injury resulting therefrom: (1) must have occurred in connection with a negligent act or omission of the governmental entity, not a third party; (2) must be associated with "constructing" or "maintaining" the facility; and (38) must not be solely due to the facility's design.
Maj. op. at 1181 (emphasis added). In its rewritten formula for a waiver of immunity, the majority simply eliminates the General Assembly's requirement for a "physical condition;" recasts the legislature's specific causal requirements ("resulting from," "proximately caused by") in general relational terms ("in connection with," "associated with"); and deprives the terms "constructing" and "maintaining" of any particular content or meaning, instead interpreting them broadly to "[give] effect to the Premises Liability Statute." Maj. op. at 1182.
In its analysis of Jenks v. Sullivan, 826 P.2d 825 (Colo.1992), the majority relies on the general dictionary definition of "condition," quoted as a starting point in Jenks, but fails to further limit that definition to its physical applications, as required by the statute and our analysis in Jenks. It therefore concludes that the legislative term "physical condition" need not refer to the physical or structural aspects of the facility but merely refers to a "situation" or "state of being." I suggest that in Jemks, we concluded the exact opposite.
Thus, the statute refers to an injury arising from the state of the building itself or the use of a state of the building, but not to one arising from activities conducted within the building. Injury stemming from the use of a dangerous or defective physical condition of the building itself might include injury resulting from, for example, using a faulty elevator or falling down defective stairs.
Id. at 827.
The dangerous condition must stem from a physical or structural defect in the building.
Id. at 830.
The majority's approach also no longer requires that the condition be proximately caused by an act or omission of the entity in constructing or maintaining the facility. While section 24-10-106(1)(c) waives governmental immunity only for injuries "resulting from" a "dangerous condition of any public building", and section 103(1) limits a "dangerous condition" within the meaning of the statute to a "physical condition" that is "proximately caused" by the public entity's negligence in constructing or maintaining its facility, the majority extends the waiver to injuries resulting from "the state of the building or use of a state of the building" that "occurred in connection with" the entity's negligence and are "associated with" constructing or maintaining the facility. The waiver is thus expanded to include injuries that did not result from a physical condition of the facility at all, much less a physical condition that was proximately caused by the public entity's negligence in construction or maintenance. Under this formulation, immunity is waived for injuries that are, in some undefined way, connected to or associated with maintenance or construction.2
Finally, although unnecessary to resolve the waiver question in this case, the majority explains that the statute does not "fix" the meaning of either "constructing" or "maintaining." While the analysis of "maintaining" *1186in Swieckowski, even according to the majority's reading, is sufficient to dispose of the allegations here, the majority insists that the meaning of "maintaining" is not limited by our analysis in that case. Similarly, although the meaning of "constructing" is not implicated in any way by the theories of the complaint, the majority finds the term sufficient ly elastic to include the temporary use of a portable extension ladder, offering this interpretation of "constructing" as an alternate explanation for our holding in Walton. Most significantly, however, the majority apparently finds these two terms to be expansive and overlapping because of the relationship it perceives between the basis for waiver of immunity and permissible theories of recovery. I consider any suggestion that the meaning of "constructing" and "maintaining" is governed by a theory of recovery for premises liability to be an unwarranted extension of our holding in Springer.
Following the decision of this court in Evans v. Board of County Commissioners, 174 Colo. 97, 482 P.2d 968 (1971),3 the General Assembly made the public policy choice to restore governmental immunity from suit for injury, as it had authority to do. See ch. 323, see. 1, §§ 130-11-1 to -17, 1971 Colo. Sess. Laws 1204, 1204-11; Walton, 968 P.2d at 643. In the very act of doing so, it recognized that the doctrine of governmental immunity would be inequitable in some instances but noted that unlimited liability could disrupt or make prohibitively expensive the provision of essential public services, and that the taxpayers would ultimately bear the burden of unlimited liability. It therefore delineated a number of limited cireumstances in which immunity would be waived, including for injuries resulting from certain dangerous physical conditions caused by the negligent construction or maintenance of public buildings. Whether for reasons of proof, or predictability and uniformity of application, or something else altogether, the General Assembly has chosen to limit the state's liability for dangerous conditions in public buildings to injuries resulting from dangerous physical conditions caused by the public entity's failure to construct the building as it was designed or to maintain it as constructed. Whatever the merits of the policy, it clearly provides a rational basis for distinguishing victims who are entitled to seek recovery from those who are not.
Besides explaining the waiver in a way that I do not believe comports with the language of the statute, the majority opinion does two other things with which I disagree. Rather than narrowing the ground for decision in the case before us, the majority's "case by case" approach, in my opinion, makes less definite and thereby expands the parameters of the waiver of immunity provided by statute. It provides no meaningful guidance for government entities seeking to obey the law or trial courts seeking to apply it. I do not understand our pronouncement in Corsentino v. Cordova, 4 P.3d 1082, 1086 (Colo.2000), to suggest that waiver provisions are to be construed so broadly. If the statutory waiver is as malleable as the majority finds it to be, I am hard pressed to find a principled basis for denying recovery by the student in this case, who was negligently restrained and secluded by her teacher, while permitting recovery by the student in Walton, merely because her injury involved the use of a portable ladder to remove supplies from a loft.
I therefore concur in the judgment only.
Chief Justice MULLARKEY and Justice KOURLIS join in the concurrence.

. We have previously considered the phrase "use thereof" as it appears in section 24-10-103(1), and determined that it refers specifically to a use of the "physical condition," as distinguished from merely the use of the building generally. Jenks v. Sullivan, 826 P.2d 825, 827 (Colo.1992).

. In Walton, where a student was injured when a ladder she was using to remove supplies from a loft slipped on a floor that had been recently stripped and sealed, we pointed out that the injuries at issue there resulted from a combination of factors, including a physical condition proximately caused by the public entity's negligence in maintaining its floor, which is a quintessential act of maintenance within the meaning of section 24-10-103(1). Because the injury resulted from a physical condition caused by maintenance, it was also necessary to demonstrate that *1186the combination of factors presented an unreasonable risk about which the entity should have known in order to satisfy all of the conditions of the waiver. To the extent that our opinion in Walton could be read to imply that the mere participation of the injured victim in a maintenance-related activity could actually make a physical condition proximately caused by maintaining the facility unnecessary for a waiver, such a reading would not be supported by the language of the statute and furthermore would be completely unnecessary to the holding in that case.

. The common law of governmental immunity was abolished in the course of a trilogy of cases decided by this court in 1971. See Evans, 174 Colo. 97, 482 P.2d 968; Flournoy v. Sch. Dist., 174 Colo. 110, 482 P.2d 966 (1971); Proffitt v. State, 174 Colo. 113, 482 P.2d 965 (1971).