Court Opinion

ID: 9796815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:06:02.481757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:39.541327
License: Public Domain

FABE, Justice,
with whom CARPENETI, Justice, joins, dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because I do not believe that the court’s decision to overturn Zerbe v. State1 complies with our rule of stare decisis. Under this well-settled rule, we must adhere to our precedents unless clearly convinced (1) that a decision was originally erroneous or is no longer sound, and (2) that more good than harm would result from overruling it.2 Neither federal case law nor the legislative history of AS 09.50.250 indicates that Zerbe is no longer sound. Furthermore, overruling this decision is likely to result in significantly more harm than good, because doing so removes an incentive for prison officials to avoid negligence in their most basic duties, and invites precisely the type of negligence that led to Kinegak’s unjust imprisonment. Because I would adhere to our rule of stare decisis, and hold that AS 09.50.250(3) does not immunize the state from Kinegak’s claim, I would reverse the judgment of the superior court.
I. Federal Case Law
When we held in Zerbe that an action sounding in “negligent record keeping, rather than false imprisonment”3 was not barred by Alaska’s sovereign immunity statute,4 we looked to several federal cases interpreting 28 U.S.C. § 2680(h).5 This does not mean, however, that Zerbe’s soundness is contingent on agreement with the majority of federal jurisdictions. Although we acknowledged in Zerbe that “the federal cases barring recovery under § 2680(h) are in the numerical majority,” we explicitly aligned ourselves with the “better reasoned” minority of cases.6 Thus, the appropriate inquiry is not whether Zerbe represents the majority rule, but rather whether its view of sovereign immunity still falls within the broad spectrum of federal interpretations of the FTCA.
A. The independent duty doctrine
Since Zerbe was decided, federal courts have recognized an “independent duty” exception to sovereign immunity. Under this exception, a plaintiff may bring a claim of negligence against the United States if the underlying duty does not derive from the *895torts listed in § 2680(h).7 The Supreme Court recognized this exception in Sheridan v. United States, but it did not resolve the question whether the FTCA bars negligence claims based on the tortfeasor’s status as a government employee.8
Since Sheridan, the majority of federal jurisdictions that have addressed this issue have declined to permit negligent supervision claims against the government or have suggested that such claims would be barred if they were brought.9 But the Ninth Circuit, and a district court in the First Circuit, have concluded that these claims are not barred.10 The D.C. Circuit, like the United States Supreme Court, has so far refrained from deciding whether the government can be held liable for negligent hiring and supervision.11 Finally, the Third Circuit has taken an intermediate position, venturing that “even if the United States cannot be held liable for [the tortfeasor’s] actions based on its status as his employer, ... it may be without sovereign immunity for negligence by other [government] employees, who were within the scope of their own employment, in not stopping the *896injurious behavior.”12
In sum, although FTCA case law has evolved significantly since Zerbe was decided, and Zerbe continues to represent the minority view, the conclusion that the FTCA does not bar negligence claims based on the tort-feasor’s employment relationship with the government has not been foreclosed. Because some federal courts still maintain that such claims are not barred, Zerbe’s position remains plausible in the context of FTCA case law.
B. False imprisonment cases
Moreover, the vast majority of federal false imprisonment cases involve claims that the plaintiff should never have been arrested at all, rather than that the plaintiff should have been released earlier. Wrongful arrest cases provide little guidance to us in deciding this case because they involve very different policy implications from failure-to-release cases. The decision whether to arrest someone must often be taken on a moment’s notice with incomplete information. For that reason, permitting plaintiffs to sue the government for good-faith arrest decisions that later prove to be incorrect _ could endanger public safety by deterring the police from making proper arrests. Requiring state officials to release inmates on time creates no such danger: If the state officials are keeping accurate records, the inmate’s release date is no surprise, and indeed requires no decision at all from prison officials. The public safety implications of releasing the prisoner have presumably been taken into account by the sentencing court.
There appear to be no cases that analyze the false imprisonment provision of § 2680(h) in light of the independent duty exception, and the two cases cited in footnote 39 of the court’s opinion provide little guidance on the subject. Both eases involve claims similar to Kinegak’s, and both courts conclude that the claims are “essentially ... for false imprisonment,” 13 but neither case discusses the independent duty exception. Because these cases simply assume what they conclude— that a claim based on the failure to release an inmate on time is necessarily a false imprisonment claim — and because the vast majority of federal jurisdictions have not addressed this issue, it is likely that a claim analogous to Kinegak’s would be allowed to proceed in some federal jurisdictions.14 For this reason, the two federal cases concerning failure to release an inmate on time, like FTCA cases generally, have not left Zerbe “a remnant of abandoned doctrine.”15
II. Legislative History
The legislative history of AS 09.50.250 is more revealing for what has not happened than for what has. As of October 2004 the legislature had amended the statute five times without attempting to override Zerbe.16 It amended the statute again in 200517 while the present case was pending, but again made no attempt to override Zerbe. Thus, although it has repeatedly modified the statute, the legislature has done nothing to indicate that Zerbe was wrongly decided.
*897III. More Harm than Good Would Result from Overruling Zerbe.
Even if there had been a sea change in federal law, this alone would not be sufficient to overrule Zerbe. The second prong of this court’s stare decisis rale forbids overruling a prior case unless the court is “clearly convinced ... that more good than ham would result from a departure from precedent.”18 We have applied this standard repeatedly in a number of different areas of law.19
The court's half-hearted attempt to address this prong — a single paragraph relegated to a footnote — is both perfunctory and tautological. To support its claim that overruling Zerbe would do more good than harm, the court argues that the decision is outmoded in light of Justice Kennedy’s rationale in Sheridan, and that failing to overrule it “would continue to cause outcomes that are contrary to the legislative requirement that certain categories of torts may not be maintained against the state.”20 The claim that, unlike the majority of the United States Supreme Court, we should adopt Justice Kennedy’s view of the independent duty doctrine is no more than a restatement of the court’s argument that Zerbe is no longer sound in light of federal ease law. Similarly, the claim that Zerbe “cause[s] outcomes that are contrary to the legislative requirement that certain categories of torts may not be maintained against the state,”21 is nothing more than a restatement of the court’s conclusion that Zerbe was wrongly decided.22 And this conclusion is also unsupported by the state’s experience since 1978. Alaska courts have not been faced with a deluge of claims based on prison officials’ failure to release inmates on time,23 and they continue to reject claims arising from the torts listed in AS 09.50.250(3).24
If liability for negligence prevented DOC from fulfilling its function, as liability for false arrest might do in the context of law enforcement, overruling Zerbe might be beneficial. But when DOC is responsible for releasing a prisoner on a predetermined date, its duties are almost synonymous with avoiding negligence. Such a release, based on a decision made by a sentencing court and kept on file by DOC, presents very little room for discretion: either the prisoner’s sentence has ended or it has not.25 For this reason, there is no set of choices analogous to *898proper arrest decisions that could be chilled by imposing liability on DOC for negligently miscalculating inmates’ sentences. ■
Finally, overruling Zerbe could do significant harm, because it would eliminate an incentive for DOC to fulfill its duties in a non-negligent manner. As the court’s opinion concedes, DOC’s conduct in the present case has been “abhorrent,”26 and if the miscalculation had been greater, it “would be even more abhorrent.”27 But, by shielding DOC from liability for negligent record keeping, the court’s opinion invites more misconduct. The most likely practical consequence of overruling Zerbe is therefore an increase in negligence on the part of DOC — and future miscalculations may involve periods of unjust imprisonment longer than seven days.
In sum, the court’s decision to overrule Zerbe does not comply with our rule of stare decisis. Changes in federal case law have not rendered Zerbe “a remnant of abandoned doctrine,”28 the legislature has made no effort to override the case by statute, and the main foreseeable consequence of abandoning this precedent is an increase in negligent misconduct with regal’d to DOC’s most basic duties. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. 578 P.2d 597 (Alaska 1978).

. State v. Fremgen, 914 P.2d 1244, 1245 (Alaska 1996). In general, this court "do[es] not lightly overrule [its] past decisions.” State v. Dunlop, III P.2d 604, 610 (Alaska 1986); see also Thomas v. Anchorage Equal Rights Comm'n, 102 P.3d 937, 943 (Alaska 2004) ("The stare decisis doctrine rests on a solid bedrock of practicality: 'no judicial system could do society's work if it eyed each issue afresh in every case that raised it.' ") (quoting Pratt & Whitney Canada, Inc. v. United Techs., 852 P.2d 1173, 1175 (Alaska 1993)).

. 587 P.2d at 601.

. Zerbe, 578 P.2d at 601 ("Today, when various branches of government collect and keep copious records concerning numerous aspects of the lives of ordinary citizens, we are unwilling to deny recourse to those hapless people whose lives are disrupted because of careless record keeping or poorly programmed computers. We see no justification for immunizing the government from the damaging consequences of its clerical employees' failure to exercise due care.”).

. See id. at 598, 599 & n. 4 (listing federal cases supporting sovereign immunity); id. at 600-01 (discussing several cases allowing actions for negligence against the federal government). Like AS 09.50.250(3), § 2680(h) immunizes the state from ”[a]ny claim arising out of ... false imprisonment.”

. 578 P.2d at 599-600. In Zerbe, we discussed the "better" reasoning of several federal cases. Id. at 600-01. See, e.g., Quinones v. United States, 492 F.2d 1269, 1276 (3d Cir.1974) (allowing an action for negligent failure to maintain records to proceed where the resulting harm was defamation); Gibson v. United States, 457 F.2d 1391, 1395 (3d Cir.1972) (permitting an action against the government for negligence in failing to prevent a Job Corps trainee from assaulting a Job Corps instructor); Rogers v. United States, 397 F.2d 12, 15 (4th Cir.1968) (allowing an action for negligence where the government released the teenage plaintiff from prison, but did not provide transportation home, resulting in the plaintiff being trapped and physically tortured by a third party).

. See Sheridan v. United States, 487 U.S. 392, 402, 108 S.Ct. 2449, 101 L.Ed.2d 352 (1988) (holding that an action against the United States for injuries that the plaintiff sustained when an off-duty serviceman fired several shots into his automobile was not barred by § 2680(h) because the government had an independent "duty to prevent a foreseeably dangerous individual from wandering about unattended").

. Unlike Justice Kennedy's concurrence, which advocates a bright-line rule forbidding claims "that the [g]overnment was negligent in the supervision or selection of the employee and that the intentional tort occurred as a result," id. at 406, 108 S.Ct. 2449, the Sheridan majority explicitly declines to reach the issue: "[bjecause [the tortfeasor’s] employment status is irrelevant to the outcome, it is not appropriate in this case to consider whether negligent hiring, negligent supervision, or negligent training may ever provide a basis for liability under the [FTCA] for a foreseeable assault or battery by a [government employee.” Id. at 403 n. 8, 108 S.Ct. 2449. Although Justice Kennedy’s position was taken by a plurality in an earlier case, it has never been adopted by a majority of the Supreme Court. See United States v. Shearer, 473 U.S. 52, 54-58, 105 S.Ct. 3039, 87 L.Ed.2d 38 (1985) (holding, by a plurality, that an action based on negligent supervision of a serviceman who abducted and murdered another serviceman was barred by the FTCA).

. See LM ex rel. KM v. United States, 344 F.3d 695, 699 (7th Cir.2003) (noting that "the government’s consent to suit under the FTCA extends to cases claiming an injury that is in part the result of an intentional tort, so long as the government negligently allowed the independent tort to occur in a way that is entirely independent of [the tortfeasor's] employment status”) (citations and quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original); Billingsley v. United States, 251 F.3d 696, 698 (8th Cir.2001) (concluding that "[t]o find the government liable for negligent hiring and supervision of an employee who commits a tort would frustrate the purpose of § 2680(h)”); Leleux v. United States, 178 F.3d 750, 757 (5th Cir.1999) (noting that "Sheridan stands for the principle that negligence claims related to a Government employee's § 2680(h) intentional tort may proceed where the negligence arises out of an independent, antecedent duty unrelated to the employment relationship between the tortfeasor and the United States”); Franklin v. United States, 992 F.2d 1492, 1499 n. 6 (10th Cir.1993) (stating that "it is doubtful” whether a claim "ultimately derive[d] from the government's employment relationship to the immediate tortfeasors” would be permitted under § 2680(h)); Talbert v. United States, 932 F.2d 1064, 1066-67 (4th Cir.1991) (holding that the plaintiffs negligent record keeping claim was barred by the FTCA); Guccione v. United States, 847 F.2d 1031, 1037 (2d Cir.1988) (noting that the independent duty doctrine allows "mixed claims of negligence and intentional conduct in the relatively uncommon case in which the negligence alleged was independent of the government's supervision of its employees”) (citation and quotation marks omitted); Verran v. United States, 305 F.Supp.2d 765, 775-76 (E.D.Mich.2004) (stating that “negligent hiring and supervision claims involving an employee's intentional tort are barred by the FTCA's intentional tort exclusion”); Acosta v. United States, 207 F.Supp.2d 1365, 1368-71 (S.D.Fla. 2001) (concluding that federal courts do not have jurisdiction over "negligent supervision, negligent hiring, [and] negligent retention” claims against the United States).

. See Senger v. United States, 103 F.3d 1437, 1442 (9th Cir.1996) (holding that § 2680(h) "does not immunize the [g]overnment from liability for negligently hiring and supervising an employee”); Mulloy v. United States, 884 F.Supp. 622, 630 (D.Mass.1995) (concluding that "nothing in Sheridan logically requires a rule barring all claims alleging negligent hiring and negligent supervision by the government”).

. See Bembenista v. United States, 866 F.2d 493, 498 (D.C.Cir.1989) ("We need not reach the more troublesome question whether the government would be liable for the mere negligent *896retention and supervision of a medical technician known to be psychologically disturbed.").

. Matsko v. United States, 372 F.3d 556, 561 (3d Cir.2004). Quinones has not been overruled by the Third Circuit, and its emphasis on the differing elements of the negligence claim and the tort of defamation could be viewed as an early version of the independent duty doctrine. 492 F.2d at 1276.

. Maurello v. United States, 111 F.Supp.2d 475, 476 (D.NJ.2000); Puccini v. United States, 978 F.Supp. 760, 761 (N.D.Ill.1997).

. Senger and Mulloy suggest that a claim like Kinegak's could be brought in the Ninth Circuit and the District of Massachusetts if the claim were based on the government's negligence in supervising the employees responsible for keeping records of inmates’ release dates. See Senger, 103 F.3d at 1442; Mulloy, 884 F.Supp. at 630.

. State v. Fremgen, 914 P.2d 1244, 1245 (Alaska 1996).

. Ch. 30, § 1, SLA 2003; ch. 32, § 9, SLA 1997; ch. 119, § 1, SLA 1992; ch. 57, § 1, SLA 1989; ch. 106, § 5, SLA 1986.

. Ch. 54, § 2, SLA 2005. The 2005 amendment clarified the state’s immunity from certain types of lawsuits involving emergency medical quarantines, and was part of legislation defining "the duties of the Department of Health and Social Services as those duties pertain to public health *897and public health emergencies and disasters.” Id.

. Fremgen, 914 P.2d at 1245.

. See, e.g., Lawson v. Lawson, 108 P.3d 883, 887-88 (Alaska 2005) (applying both prongs of the court's stare decisis test to a prior decision permitting judicial promulgation of child support rules, and declining to overrule the decision); State v. Semancik, 99 P.3d 538, 541-43 (Alaska 2004) (applying both prongs to a previous decision permitting a criminal defendant to challenge on appeal a burglary indictment that failed to identify the defendant’s intended crime, and overruling the decision); State v. Coon, 974 P.2d 386, 394-97 (Alaska 1999) (applying both prongs to a prior case involving the admission of scientific evidence under Alaska Rule of Evidence 702, and overruling that case).

. Op. at 892 n. 31.

. Op. at 892 n. 31.

. The court echoes this statement elsewhere in its opinion, arguing that maintaining Zerbe would prevent courts from effectively enforcing the state’s sovereign immunity statute because "retaining state immunity would be useless if plaintiffs could use a different theory to attack conduct that would be traditionally understood as false imprisonment and nothing more.” Op. at 893.

. Only a few cases of this type have arisen since 1978, and these generally involve disputes about the calculation of time off for good behavior, not simple clerical error. See, e.g., Jackson v. State, 31 P.3d 105, 108-09 (Alaska App.2001) (construing the statute providing for time off for good behavior to require that it be offset against composite sentences); see also Charles v. State, Mem. Op. & J. No. 4762 (Alaska App., September 24, 2003), 2003 WL 22208498, at *1 (rejecting the plaintiff’s claim that his time off for good behavior was miscalculated because the court's own calculations suggested a longer period of imprisonment than DOC’s calculations).

. See, e.g., Blackburn v. State, Dep’t ofTransp. & Pub. Facilities, 103 P.3d 900, 908 (Alaska 2004) (affirming the superior court's grant of summary judgment for the state on the ground that Blackburn's misrepresentation claim was barred by AS 09.50.250(3)).

. In cases where DOC officials claim that a prisoner has forfeited time off for good behavior by committing an infraction, more room for discretion may be justified, but the present case does not require the court to reach this issue.

. Op. at 893.

. Op. at 893. Although the primary harm from this type of negligence is the prisoner's unjustified loss of freedom, it bears mentioning that the state also experiences harm: in Kinegak's case, the state had to pay the costs of supporting a prisoner for seven extra days.

.Frangen, 914 P.2d at 1245.