Court Opinion

ID: 9714243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:33:42.075455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:24.561786
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge,
concurring.
I concur. I do so in the knowledge that today's decision constitutes a conscious narrow interpretation of the Fireman's Rule so as to limit its seope.7
In Thompson v. Murat Shrine Club, Inc. (1994) 2d Dist.Ind.App., 689 N.E.2d 1039, 1041, this court quoting from two prior Third District cases stated that "the Fireman's Rule encapsulates the principle that public safety officers 'whose occupations by nature expose them to particular risks, may not hold another negligent for creating the situation to which they respond in their professional *387capacity'" (footnote omitted). As noted by the majority, the rule was similarly phrased in Fox v. Hawkins (1992) 1st Dist.Ind.App., 594 N.E.2d 493.
No longer, however, does the rule have general application to all public safety officials whose duties expose them to particular risks. Our decision today limits the application of the Rule to such officials when they are actually engaged in emergency rescue activities in an effort to protect life, health or property.
The Rule does not hereafter apply, if it ever did apply, to a police officer giving safety lectures to children at an elementary school; nor to a nighttime security officer engaged in normal routine surveillance of an office building; nor to a firefighter collecting Christmas toys for needy children; and perhaps not even to an arson investigator inspecting the site of a fire to determine the cause.
Some activities will appear to fall very close to the line which delineates whether or not the Rule is applicable. I would venture the view that the arson investigator in my example would fall into that category. So also, perhaps, a building inspector if he were inspecting a building recently damaged by fire in order to determine whether safety factors dictate that the occupants must evacuate the building. Here, Sam's activities on the occasion in question were not of an emer-geney nature involving the preservation of life, health or property. In any event, in many, if not most, Fireman's Rule situations, the courts will have to examine them upon a case by case, very fact-sensitive, basis.

. The summary judgment was granted solely upon the trial court's conclusion that the Fireman's Rule precluded establishment of any liability on the part of Wesley for negligent conduct. Even if the record were to reflect the absence, as a matter of law, of any negligence upon Wesley's part, such contention was not made in Wesley's Motion for Summary Judgment, nor were materials designated which would demonstrate the absence of an issue of fact as to Wesley's negligence. Wesley did contend that he was not liable as a matter of law, because he was not in control of the property at the time of injury. This contention does not equate with an assertion that as a matter of law, he was not negligent. Accordingly, there is not a viable alternative basis for affirming the summary judgment.