Court Opinion

ID: 9588765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:38:20.794951+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:48:37.207345
License: Public Domain

*484Justice Orr
dissenting.
The majority opinion erroneously takes a limited and obscure common law concept, the public duty doctrine, which has traditionally applied only to municipalities and their law enforcement responsibilities, and expands the doctrine’s application to effectively eviscerate the Tort Claims Act. As a result, the right of individuals to sue the State for negligent acts committed by the State, a right expressly conveyed by the General Assembly, is nullified without the support of any precedential authority permitting such an indulgence. Therefore, I dissent for the reasons which follow.
The recognition of the public duty doctrine in this country is traced to an 1855 decision of the United States Supreme Court. South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. 396, 15 L. Ed. 433 (1855). The case involved a negligence suit brought by plaintiffs to recover against a sheriff and his sureties on an official bond for failure to keep the peace and protect the plaintiffs. The Court stated:
Actions against the sheriff for a breach of his ministerial duties in the execution of process are to be found in almost every book of reports. But no instance can be found where a civil action has been sustained against him for his default or misbehavior as conservator of the peace, by those who have suffered injury to their property or persons through the violence of mobs, riots, or insurrections.
Id. at 403, 15 L. Ed. at 435. The Court went on to examine several earlier British decisions and concluded that because no special right was alleged, the cause of action failed.
In reviewing this seminal decision and other authorities, I can find no common law basis for the majority taking the public duty doctrine beyond the original bounds of local law enforcement. In South, where the doctrine first originated, the public duty doctrine was applied to address only municipalities and law enforcement. This was also the case in Braswell v. Braswell, 330 N.C. 363, 410 S.E.2d 897 (1991), where this Court first adopted the public duty doctrine. In Braswell, the doctrine was again only applied to factors involving a municipality and law enforcement. There, Justice Meyer, writing for a unanimous Court, explained:
The general common law rule, known as the public duty doctrine, is that a municipality and its agents act for the benefit of the public, and therefore, there is no liability for the failure to furnish police protection to specific individuals.
*485Id. at 370, 410 S.E.2d at 901. Neither South nor Braswell justify the majority’s sudden expansion or enlargement of the doctrine to situations beyond local law enforcement. No mention is made or reference cited by the majority which authorizes this extension, and no common law authority is offered. This judicial amplification, therefore, is not justified, and to the extent that other state jurisdictions have bent and skewed the common law to expand the doctrine, we cannot, and should not, follow such an ill-advised course.
Prior to the Tort Claims Act, the State and its agencies were immune from tort liability under the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Gammons v. N.C. Dep’t of Human Resources, 344 N.C. 51, 54, 472 S.E.2d 722, 723-24 (1996). This common law doctrine of immunity extended protection to government entities for liability for injuries caused by government acts no matter how wanton or reckless the government’s conduct. Davis v. Messer, 119 N.C. App. 44, 52, 457 S.E.2d 902, 907, disc. rev. denied, 341 N.C. 647, 462 S.E.2d 508 (1995); Wiggins v. City of Monroe, 73 N.C. App. 44, 49, 326 S.E.2d 39, 43 (1985). When the General Assembly enacted the Tort Claims Act in 1951, it partially waived or eliminated the State’s sovereign immunity by allowing actions to be brought against the State in eases where negligence was committed by its employees in the course of their employment. Gammons, 344 N.C. at 54, 472 S.E.2d at 723-24. The purpose and effect of the Act was to remove the blanket immunity traditionally enjoyed by the State under the English common law and permit injured persons to recover against the State for negligent acts, Lyon & Sons, Inc. v. N.C. State Bd. of Educ., 238 N.C. 24, 27, 76 S.E.2d 553, 555 (1953), or omissions, Phillips v. N.C. Dep’t of Transp., 80 N.C. App. 135, 341 S.E.2d 339 (1986) (1977 amendment to the Act extended State’s liability to include negligent omisisons). To ensure this, the legislature made the Act expressly provide that the State is liable “under circumstances where [it], if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the laws of North Carolina.” N.C.G.S. § 143-291(a) (1996).
In the case sub judice, plaintiffs assert negligence claims against the State for its alleged failure to inspect the Imperial Foods Products plant. The public duty doctrine, as enunciated in Braswell, does not apply in this case because here: (1) the suit is against the State, not a municipality as in Braswell; and (2) the suit involves failure to inspect, not failure to provide police protection as in Braswell. Enlarging the doctrine as the majority does in this case means that it will be extended beyond its traditional realm of protecting local law *486enforcement and will apply to circumstances outside those identified in Braswell. The public duty doctrine, moreover, should not be applied here because, unlike in Braswell, this suit was brought under the Tort Claims Act. The public duty doctrine should not be used to grant the State immunity when the express intent of the Tort Claims Act was to remove immunity and make the State liable for its wrongs. Granting immunity to the State under the public duty doctrine makes the Tort Claims Act virtually obsolete. Thus, not only does Braswell not justify extending immunity, but the specific language and underlying policy of the Tort Claims Act precludes such an expansion.
The majority, however, attempts to justify its decision on the grounds that the public duty doctrine applies because: (1) The Tort Claims Act requires the State to be treated like a private person and private persons do not have public duties; (2) The Tort Claims Act incorporates the common law and therefore incorporates the public duty doctrine; (3) The Braswell policies support application of the doctrine; and (4) Under OSHANC, the General Assembly never intended for a duty to be imposed. All of these arguments are untenable.
First, it is patently unreasonable to interpret the Act’s requirement that the State be treated like a private person as absolving the State of all liability. The very reason for this language is to eliminate the common law doctrine of sovereign immunity. The intent is to allow an individual to assert a suit against the State, the same suit an individual could assert against a private person or entity. The legislative intent of the Act was not to take this right away, especially since there was no liability to take away when this language was chosen and the Act adopted. If the language concerning treatment like a private person had been intended to mean what the majority says it means, i.e., that the State receives immunity, the Act would have no purpose. If that had been the case, the legislature could have just left sovereign immunity in place.
In addition to clashing with the intent of the Act, the majority’s interpretation of this language also approves an oblique reading of the Act which necessitates a kind of acrobatic reasoning. The majority asserts that the legislative request to treat the State as a private person really means that the State has immunity. This does not make sense. The legislature did not intend to be so obtuse as to ostensibly take immunity away from the State, yet by including language requir*487ing treatment like a private person, grant it back that very same immunity under the public duty doctrine. Such reasoning would require the Court to read between the lines and discover a whole line of reasoning in the one sentence innocuously addressing treatment like a private person. If the legislature had intended to grant the State immunity by requiring that it be treated like a private person it could have simply said such.
The majority’s second argument, that the Act incorporates the public duty doctrine because it incorporates the common law, is also erroneous. As previously noted, the public duty doctrine originated in the United States Supreme Court case South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. 396, 15 L. Ed. 433 (1855). Thereafter, “the public duty doctrine was widely accepted by most state courts.” Ezell v. Cockrell, 902 S.W.2d 394, 397 (Term. 1995). When most states abolished sovereign immunity by statute, the doctrine came under attack. Id. at 398. Some state courts abolished the doctrine, arguing that it was simply sovereign immunity under another guise and to apply it was inconsistent with statutes that eliminated immunity. Id. Other states, such as Georgia, limited the application of the public duty doctrine to apply only in situations involving police protection. Hamilton v. Cannon, 267 Ga. 655, 482 S.E.2d 370 (1997).
In North Carolina, the common law tradition of the public duty doctrine was never extended by this Court beyond its limited application to municipalities and law enforcement. Second, the North Carolina legislature has never adopted or recognized the public duty doctrine. In fact, this Court only recognized the doctrine for the first time in 1991, and only then, the Court recognized the defense in the most narrow of terms. To argue, as the majority does, that by enacting the Tort Claims Act in 1951, the Legislature somehow incorporated the expansive public duty doctrine enunciated by the majority is at best, simply wrong.
In its third argument, the majority asserts that the Braswell rationale of preventing enormous liability on agencies with limited resources applies here as well. This is misplaced. First, damages are capped under the Tort Claims Act. The “General Assembly amended N.C.G.S. § 143-291(a) so that damages are capped at $150,000 for causes arising on or after 1 October 1994.” Parham v. Iredell County Dept. of Social Services, 127 N.C. App. 144, -, 489 S.E.2d 610, 613 (1997). Thus, the majority’s fear of an “overwhelming burden of liability” has already been directly addressed by the General Assembly *488which has chosen, in its legislative capacity, to limit liability as it deemed necessary.
Also, the potential for liability and circumstances in Braswell and in this case are very different. In Braswell, there was a potential for overwhelming and unlimited liability because the plaintiff was claiming that the police failed to protect her from an unpredictable criminal act. If the police could be liable for such failures, the city would endure enormous liability for all criminal acts it allegedly failed to prevent. In this case, we are dealing with inspections which are required to be carried out on a regular, predictable basis. Here, the duty to perform is clearly set out and can be accomplished. It is feasible. Also, although there may be the inclination to protect the State from suit, this case does not involve determining how “limited police resources should be allocated,” as was the issue in Braswell. Braswell, 330 N.C. at 371, 410 S.E.2d at 901. Instead, this case is more similar to what we differentiated in Braswell, where we stated that dealing with police resources was “quite different from the predictable allocation of resources and liabilities when public hospitals, rapid transit systems, or even highways are provided.” Id. at 371, 410 S.E.2d at 901-02. Thus, the policies articulated in Braswell are also inapplicable.
The fourth and final argument offered by the majority is that OSHANC did not impose a duty to conduct investigations. This is incorrect because N.C.G.S. § 95-4 provides that the Commissioner of Labor is “charged with the duty” to visit and inspect the factories for violations. It is unlikely that the legislature intended inspections only “as often as practicable,” as the majority asserts, when it used such express language and included an extended list of requirements or actions that the Commissioner was required to take in order to fulfill this mandated duty.
It must be emphasized that the legislature, by removing sovereign immunity, made a policy decision to allow negligence suits against the state under circumstances and limitations imposed by the Tort Claims Act. Likewise, to the extent the legislature wants to limit lawsuits in the future which are similar to the one before us, it can certainly amend the Act — or abolish it altogether and reimpose sovereign immunity. It is unnecessary and inappropriate for this Court to become the protector of the legislative treasury by undoing what the representatives of the public voted to accomplish.
Finally, it should be noted that other commentators have recognized the many valid, cogent arguments which have been made *489against extending the public duty doctrine to cases such as this one. As one author noted in his critique of the doctrine:
[f]irst, the application of the doctrine allows governmental entities to use the shield of sovereign immunity when the legislature no longer mandates such immunity. Second, the application of the doctrine requires that plaintiffs injured by a negligent official suffer solely because of the governmental status of the tortfeasor. Third, the application of the doctrine promotes incompetence by providing no meaningful incentive for the governmental entity to provide the services of optimal quality. Fourth, even with the elimination of the doctrine, plaintiffs must still prove breach of duty, causation, and damages; a vigorous task just like in any other negligence action. Finally, the wide availability of liability insurance allows a governmental entity limited to pecuniary exposure while still compensating the injured individual.
Frank Swindell, Municipal Liability for Negligent Inspections in Sinning v. Clark — A “Hollow” Victory for the Public Duty Doctrine, 18 Campbell L. Rev. 241, 250-51 (1996). Moreover, other writers have noted that many “jurisdictions [have] abrogated the doctrine of sovereign immunity because of the degree of injustice it caused.” John Cameron McMillan, Jr., Note, Government Liability and the Public Duty Doctrine, 32 Vill. L. Rev. 505, 529 (1987). By resurrecting sovereign immunity in the guise of the public duty doctrine, the majority perpetuates this injustice and disregards the mandate of the Tort Claims Act to protect injured citizens from government negligence.
Justice Frye joins in this dissenting opinion.