Court Opinion

ID: 9716750
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:50:05.138929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:48.703044
License: Public Domain

DAVID T. PROSSER, J.
¶ 37. {concurring). The overarching issue in this case is whether an employee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was responsible for safety at Camp Randall Stadium, including compliance with applicable state and federal safety regulations, is immune from tort liability for the death of a privately employed television cameraman working at the stadium, after the University employee knowingly failed to comply with an applicable state and federal safety regulation and his non-compliance was a substantial factor in causing the cameraman's death.
¶ 38. The issue is stated bluntly so that there can be no mistake about the challenge that confronted this *647court. The majority concludes that the University employee is not immune in the narrow circumstances of this case. In my view, the decision represents a small but very welcome correction in the course this court has followed for many years, and I join the majority opinion in full.
¶ 39. I write separately because I believe more change is necessary. This concurrence will attempt to explain how Wisconsin law on government responsibility for torts has come to be what it is.
I
¶ 40. It has not been easy to sue state government in tort. Since 1848, the Wisconsin Constitution has erected procedural barriers to direct action against the state without legislative consent. Article iy Section 27 of the constitution provides, "The legislature shall direct by law in what manner and in what courts suits may be brought against the state."
¶ 41. Immunity from substantive liability is different from the procedural immunity embodied in Article iy Section 27 of the constitution. City of Milwaukee v. Firemen Relief Ass'n of Milwaukee, 42 Wis. 2d 23, 34, 165 N.W.2d 384 (1969). As this court observed in 1915, "nonliability for torts arising out of the prosecution of governmental functions is based upon grounds of public policy distinct from the immunity of the sovereign from suit.... No doubt such policy may originally have sprung in a large measure from the conception that the sovereign can do no wrong." Apfelbacher v. State, 160 Wis. 565, 575, 152 N.W. 144 (1915).
¶ 42. Over the years, the intellectual underpinnings of the court-created doctrine of substantive governmental immunity from tort liability were severely *648criticized. In 1962, this court reacted to that criticism in a landmark decision. In Holytz v. City of Milwaukee, 17 Wis. 2d 26, 115 N.W.2d 618 (1962), the court unanimously "disavowed its past decisions and abrogated the principle of governmental immunity." Scott v. Savers Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 2003 WI 60, ¶ 76, 262 Wis. 2d 127, 663 N.W.2d 715 (Prosser, J., dissenting). It declared in the clearest possible terms that"henceforward, so far as governmental responsibility for torts is concerned, the rule is liability — the exception is immunity Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 39 (emphasis added).
¶ 43. The court went on: "This decision is not to be interpreted as imposing liability on a governmental body in the exercise of its legislative or judicial or quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions." Id. at 40. For this proposition, the court cited Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, 96 So. 2d 130, 133 (Fla. 1957).1
¶ 44. The court also explained that if "the legislature deems it better public policy, it is, of course, free to reinstate immunity." Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 40. "The legislature may also impose ceilings on the amount of damages or set up administrative requirements which may be preliminary to the commencement of judicial proceedings for an alleged tort." Id.
*649¶ 45. The Wisconsin Legislature did not deem it better public policy to go back to nineteenth century theories of immunity. In 1963, it enacted Wis. Stat. § 331.43 (1963-64), entitled "Tort actions against political corporations, governmental subdivisions or agencies and officers, agents or employes; notice of claim; limitation of damages and suits." This statute is now Wis. Stat. § 893.80 (2007-08),2 and it must be put in context.
¶ 46. The Holytz facts involved the governmental immunity of a municipality, the City of Milwaukee. Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 28-29. That is why 1963 Senate Bill 283, the bill that created Wis. Stat. § 331.43 (1963-64), was requested by the Wisconsin County Boards Association, the Wisconsin Town Boards Association, and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. But the Holytz decision was not confined to the abrogation of municipal government immunity. Again, the court was clear:
[W]e consider that abrogation of the doctrine [of governmental immunity] applies to all public bodies within the state: The state, counties, cities, villages, towns, school districts, sewer districts, drainage districts, and any other political subdivisions of the state — whether they be incorporated or not. By reason of the rule of respondeat superior a public body shall be liable for damages for the torts of its officers, agents, and employees occurring in the course of the business of such public body.
So far as the state of Wisconsin and its various arms is concerned, a careful distinction must be made between the abrogation of the immunity doctrine and the right of a private party to sue the state. The difference between governmental immunity from torts and the sovereign immunity of the state from suit was recognized in Apfelbacher. . . .
*650Henceforward, there will be substantive liability on the part of the state, but the right to sue the state is subject to [Section] 27, [Article] IV of the Wisconsin [C]onstitution.... The decision in the case at bar removes the state's defense of nonliability for torts, but it has no effect upon the state's sovereign right under the constitution to be sued only upon its consent.
Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 40-41 (emphasis added) (internal citations omitted).
¶ 47. When Holytz abrogated governmental immunity, municipal governments acted quickly to enact some limitations on their new liability in tort. The Wisconsin statute that is now § 893.80 was their answer. However, this statute was not intended to apply to the state.3 Thus, the state was required to enact other legislation or to look elsewhere for limits on liability or barriers to suit.
¶ 48. The court discussed these principles in Forseth v. Sweet, 38 Wis. 2d 676, 158 N.W.2d 370 (1968). In Forseth, the court explained the meaning of Holytz: Since Holytz, it said, "there is substantive liability imposed upon the state when its agents, in the course of their employment, commit a tort." Id. at 679. It added that, prior to Holytz, two reasons supported the state's immunity from suit:
(1) The sovereign immunity [or governmental immunity] of the king can do no wrong, implemented by denying the doctrine of respondeat superior where an agent of the state was guilty of tortious conduct, and (2) the lack of the procedural implementation of Article IV Section 27. Holytz removed only the first barrier.
Id. at 684.
*651¶ 49. The issue in Forseth was whether the victim of a state employee's negligence could bring a direct action against the state. Id. at 679-81. The answer was no. See id. at 681. But there was no dispute that the state would be responsible for a damage judgment against a state employee if the state employee's negligence, in the course of his employment, caused injury to Forseth. Id. at 679, 681. The court pointed to then-Wis. Stat. § 270.58 (1965-66),4 which is now Wis. Stat. § 895.46.5 Id. at 681. This statute directs governmental *652bodies, including the state, to pay judgments against public officers and employees in most situations. See Wis. Stat. § 895.46(1).
¶ 50. The Forseth court was unusually candid in summing up the situation:
This court has made the public policy decision in Holytz that it is in the interest of justice to abolish the court-made rule of sovereign immunity[, i.e., governmental immunity].... It is apparent that the present statutory structure gives the state scant protection, for by sec. 270.58 [(1965-66)], Stats., it has made itself fully liable for a judgment when it has no right to control the litigation leading to the judgment. The present system imposes great handicaps upon the legal officers of the state in defending the treasury, while leaving the treasury exposed to liability.
Forseth, 38 Wis. 2d at 690. The court speculated that "possibly there was a failure [in the legislature] to appreciate the potential exposure to liability that was to flow from the 1965 amendment that included the state in sec. 270.58 [(1965-66)] as a backstop for any judgment that might be taken against its tortiously culpable employees." Id. at 681.
*653¶ 51. The legislature later amended § 270.58 (1965-66) to permit the attorney general to defend state officers and employees in tort suits (such as the present case).
¶ 52. This was Wisconsin law in the late 1960s. In his Handbook of the Law of Torts, Professor William L. Prosser cited Florida's decision in Hargrove and observed the following:
[The rationale of Hargrove] was followed two years later by Illinois, holding a school district liable when a child was injured by the negligent operation of a school bus. These examples have touched off, during the succeeding four years, a minor avalanche of decisions repudiating municipal immunity, in California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota, and Alaska.... The decisions in Arizona, California and Wisconsin also abolished the immunity of the state ....
William L. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts 1012 (3d ed. 1964) (emphasis added) (internal footnotes omitted).
¶ 53. Against this background, we read in the majority opinion the following statement: "The general rule is that state officers and employees are immune from personal liability for injuries resulting from acts performed within the scope of their official duties." Majority op., ¶ 10.
¶ 54. How does this square with the decision in Holytz?
II
¶ 55. In Lister v. Board of Regents, 72 Wis. 2d 282, 300, 240 N.W.2d 610 (1976), this court stated as follows: "The general rule is that a public officer is not personally liable to one injured as a result of an act performed *654within the scope of his official authority and in the line of his official duty." The court did not cite any Wisconsin precedent for this statement. Instead, it cited 63 Am. Jur. 2d, Public Officers and Employees, Section 288 (1972).6 Id. at 300 n.17. The principle stated in Am. Jur. 2d was indisputably intended to apply to both state and municipal public officers.
¶ 56. Twenty years later, Kimps v. Hill, 200 Wis. 2d 1, 10, 546 N.W.2d 281 (1996) (citing Lister 72 Wis. 2d at 300), expanded the rule announced in Lister: "Under the general rule as applied in Wisconsin, state officers and employees are immune from personal liability for injuries resulting from acts performed within the scope of their official duties." (Emphasis added.) This sweeping statement was and is broad enough to cover all state employees. In a footnote, however, Kimps narrowed the Lister rule with respect to municipalities: "The general rule of immunity for state public officers stands in contrast to that for municipalities where, 'the rule is liability — the exception is immunity.'" Id. at 10 n.6 (quoting Holytz, 17 Wis. 2d at 39) (emphasis added). "The common law immunity for municipalities was abrogated by this court in Holytz----" Id. (emphasis added).
¶ 57. These passages are not an accurate statement of the holding in Holytz, and they did not anticipate the immunity that courts would continue to bestow upon municipal employees.
¶ 58. The Kimps court, after establishing the broad immunity, also stated an exception: "a public *655officer or employee is not shielded from liability for the negligent performance of a purely ministerial duty." Id. at 10 (citing Lister, 72 Wis. 2d at 300-01).
¶ 59. Today, Lister and Kimps provide the framework for analyzing government torts in Wisconsin. Actions by government employees within the scope of their official duties are generally seen as immune from liability. Liability may be found only in narrow exceptions to general immunity. Thus, governmental immunity has been supplanted by an extremely broad public employee immunity created by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Ill
¶ 60. Pubbc officer immunity goes back a long way, and to some extent, it is separate from governmental immunity. We all understand the principle that a pubbc officer should not be held liable for doing her job in a proper manner, because we know that even perfect performance, fully authorized by law, may generate litigation from those who are hurt or disadvantaged by pubbc action or policy.
¶ 61. Professor Prosser explained pubbc officer immunity in 1964 in his Handbook of the Law of Torts:
The complex process of legal administration requires that officers shall be charged with the duty of making decisions, either of law or of fact, and acting in accordance with their determinations. Public servants would be unduly hampered and intimidated in the discharge of their duties, and an impossible burden would fall upon all our agencies of government, if the immunity to private liability were not extended, in some reasonable degree, to those who act improperly, or exceed the authority given.
Prosser, supra, at 1013-14.
*656¶ 62. The key words in this passage are "private liability." Public officer immunity made great sense when state and municipal governments had governmental immunity and were able to disavow any liability for the torts of their officers and employees. Public officer immunity still makes good sense when public officers and employees are acting in a legislative or judicial or quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial capacity, where the exercise of discretion is essential.
¶ 63. Public employee immunity does not make good sense under the following circumstances: (1) substantive governmental immunity has been abrogated; (2) governments have accepted a respondeat superior relationship with their employees; and (3) public employee immunity is being used to evade liability for a public employee's obvious breach of a known standard of care.
¶ 64. The current problem is bound up in the term "ministerial duty." Wisconsin courts have taken the principle of "ministerial duty" from a context in which it was valuable and necessary and employed it in a context in which it is unfair and absurd.
IV
¶ 65. In 1951, Eugene Meyer, 14, a student at Hawthorne Junior High School in Wauwatosa, fell from a five-foot retaining wall on school grounds and sustained injuries. Meyer v. Carman, 271 Wis. 329, 331, 73 N.W.2d 514 (1955). His guardian ad litem, Patrick T. Sheedy, and his father, Alvin Meyer, filed a tort action in Eugene's behalf against the eight members of the Wauwatosa board of education individually. Id. at 330-31. When the case came to the supreme court, the issue was whether Eugene could recover from the school board members individually for "failure to erect *657and maintain guardrails or other safety devices on the retaining wall." Id. at 331. The circuit court had concluded that recovery was possible because the school board members had a ministerial duty under Wis. Stat. § 40.29(2) (1953-54) to "keep the buildings and grounds in good repair, suitably equipped and in safe and sanitary condition at all times." Id. (quoting Wis. Stat. § 40.29(2) (1953-54)). The circuit court "applied the rule of law that a public officer who knowingly or negligently fails to do a ministerial act which the law requires him to do may be compelled to respond in damages to an injured party." Id. (citing 43 Am. Jur. Public Officers § 278, at 90 (1942)).
¶ 66. The supreme court reversed, rejecting Eugene's claim for two reasons. First, the court determined the cited statute imposed duties on the board. Id. at 333-34. "Any action taken under the statute must of necessity be an official action of the board. . . . [A]ny failure to take action is the neglect of the board, and no responsibility therefor devolves upon the individual members." Id. Second, and more important for our purposes, the court stated that the "duty" to act, upon either the board or its members, was not "ministerial." Id. at 331-32. The court stated as follows:
At first blush it might appear that the duty to keep the school grounds "safe" is ministerial in character, but it is apparent on closer analysis that a great many circumstances may need to be considered in deciding what action is necessary to do so, and such decisions involve the exercise of judgment or discretion rather than the mere performance of a prescribed task. As stated in 18 McQuillin, Mun. Corp. (3d ed.), p. 225, sec. 53.33:
"Official action... is ministerial when it is absolute, certain, and imperative, involving merely the execution of a set task, and when the law which *658imposes it prescribes and defines the time, mode, and occasion for its performance with such certainty that nothing remains for judgment or discretion."
Id. (ellipsis in original).
¶ 67. The court also quoted a Florida case, First National Bank v. Filer, 145 So. 204, 207 (Fla. 1933), which stated that:
[A] duty is to be regarded as ministerial, when it is a duty that has been positively imposed by law, and its performance required at a time and in a manner, or upon conditions which are specifically designated the duty to perform under the conditions specified, not being dependent upon the officer's judgment or discretion.
Meyer, 271 Wis. at 332.
¶ 68. In examining the Meyer case in retrospect, it should be remembered that both governmental immunity and public officer immunity were still in full flower. The court was disturbed that a plaintiff, however sympathetic, was attempting to extract money damages from individual members of the Wauwatosa school board. Because existing governmental immunity rejected the principle of respondeat superior, the court knew that school board members found liable individually in tort had no assurance that the judgment against them would be covered by the school district. The opinion recognized the possibility ofpersonal liability in extreme cases, but it limited those cases to violations of a narrowly defined "ministerial duty" exception.
V
¶ 69. Meyer reappeared in the case of Chart v. Dvorak, 57 Wis. 2d 92, 203 N.W.2d 673 (1973). Chart is instructive in showing how we have retreated from state liability in tort.
*659¶ 70. Penelope Chart was a passenger in a car that failed to negotiate a sharp curve at an intersection on a state highway in Vilas County. Id. at 94. The car crashed into a power pole, and Chart was severely injured. Id. She sued Carl Dvorak, the chief maintenance engineer of District Seven of the State Highway Commission, and Martin Varekois, the district traffic supervisor for that district. Id. at 95. She claimed that the two defendants were causally negligent in: (a) failing to place critical highway warning signs far enough in advance of the intersection to provide an adequate warning to approaching traffic; and (b) "placing the warning sign[s] at a distance from the intersection so as to make it impossible for a driver traveling at a legal rate of speed to negotiate the corner safely." Id. There was no dispute that the two defendants had no role in the actual placement of the warning signs and did not supervise their placement. Id. at 96.
¶ 71. The court rejected the defendants' arguments. The court's opinion included the following statements:
The alleged wrongful act... is an insufficient warning of a known highway hazard. As both Dvorak and Varekois had official, nondelegable authority and responsibility for the placement of such highway warning signs, they are the proper parties defendant.[7]
Appellants' second argument is that the placement of a highway warning sign is a legislative or quasi-*660legislative decision and ... cannot predicate liability for an accident resulting from its location. In this respect we think the trial court correctly ... conclu[ded] that once appellants made the legislative or quasi-legislative decision to place the highway warning sign, they had a duty to place it and maintain it without negligence.
Appellants' final contention is that the trial court ought to have granted their motion for summary judgment because they cannot be individually liable in tort even if they did not place the highway warning signs in conformity with the state highway commission's legislative directive. Here again appellants advance two arguments .... The first is that since the appellants were agents of the state highway commission .. . their acts were the acts of such commission and, therefore, they are entitled to partake of the governmental immunity enjoyed by the commission. Appellants cite no authority for this proposition. There is none. It is obvious that the state is immobile absent employees or agents to carry on its functions. Ml state employees are, therefore, agents of the state when performing those tasks entrusted to them. [To agree with appellants' position that they, as agents of the highway commission, ought to be allowed to partake of the governmental immunity enjoyed by that commission, this court would have to overlook the long séttled law of this state, embodied in sec. 270.58 [(1965-66)], that public officers or employees may be proceeded against in their official capacities.] We conclude, therefore, that appellants, as public officials, may be proceeded against for dereliction of their duties resulting in injury to another.
... Here, the appellants were responsible for the proper sign placement and, therefore, are the proper parties defendant.
*661Id. at 98, 100-01, 102-04, 105 (emphasis added) (internal footnotes omitted and outer brackets in original).
¶ 72. This ruling spooked the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which moved for reconsideration and caused the court to clarify the bracketed sentence from page 103 of the opinion. The court's clarification stated the following:
The opinion refers to sec. 270.58, Stats. [(1965-66)], as embodying "the long settled law... that public officers or employees may he proceeded against in their official capacities." On rehearing, it has been called to our attention that the quoted portion of the statement could be construed as a rule of liability. It was not so intended; and were it given that blanket interpretation, it would be incorrect. Sec[tion] 270.58 [(1965-66)] imposes an obligation on the state or municipality only if a judgment has been seemed against the officer or employee. As stated in the opinion, the duty of the defendants herein was of a nondelegable, ministerial natme. These facts, if proved on trial, would impose liability not on the basis of sec. 270.58, but rather on the rationale of Meyer v. Carman.
Id. at 105 (emphasis added).
¶ 73. The court turned to Meyer again in Cords v. Ehly, 62 Wis. 2d 31, 214 N.W.2d 432 (1974). In this case, three young women fell into a gorge at a state park in Sauk County. Id. at 33. The plaintiffs sued seven state employees for negligence "in allowing the park to be open during hours of darkness, in failing to guard the trails which run along the very edge of the cliffs above the gorge, and in failing to give any warning of the naturally hazardous nature of the terrain." Id. The supreme court rejected the state's contention that the employees were immune from suit:
*662[T]he defendant employees are sued as private individuals for damages alleged to have resulted from their negligent conduct. The alleged conduct occurred within the scope of their employment by the state ....
The individual state employee defendants in this case contend that sec. 270.58, Stats. [(1965-66)], automatically transforms any suit against a state employee into a suit against the state because the state is potentially liable on the judgment. However, if sec. 270.58 [(1965-66)] is read to provide that suits in tort against state employees are to be treated as suits in tort against the state, and if the legislature has not by that statute consented to suits in tort against the state, then no damage judgments could be obtained in suits against state employees, and the provision in sec. 270.58 [(1965-66)] for the payment of such damages out of state funds would be meaningless.
Quite the contrary, it is clear that in enacting sec. 270.58 [(1965-66)], Stats., the legislature contemplated that state employees were subject to suit in tort under the law of Wisconsin and wished gratuitously to shield them from monetary loss in such suits.
In Forseth v. Sweet, this court said that "[n]o new exposure to substantive liability was contemplated by this statute." The most recent case to discuss sec. 270.58[(1965-66)], Stats., was Chart v. Dvorak. ...
. . . Any liability of state employees is governed by the common law as adopted in this state by the supreme court. If the defendants are liable under the applicable doctrines, then sec. 270.58 [(1965-66)] provides that the state will pay the judgment if the action or inaction *663giving rise to the liability was done in good faith within the scope of state employment. Sec[tion] 270.58 [(1965-66) does not become applicable until after a judgment of liability is entered.
The defendants call this court's attention to the case of Meyer v. Carman. ...
The cases of Meyer v. Carman and Chart v. Dvorak are distinguishable and not contradictory. The Meyer [c]ase, confined to its facts, concerns the absence of personal liability of school board members, where they are considered to be performing discretionary duties. Chart involves the alleged performance of ministerial, nondiscretionary duties.
The Meyer [cjase reiterates the general rule that "a public officer who knowingly or negligently fails to do a ministerial act which the law requires him to do may be compelled to respond in damages to an injured party." In Chart v. Dvorak the court, applying the ministerial/discretionary distinction, held that highway commission engineers could not be held liable for the decision as to whether or not to locate a traffic sign at a particular place, but that once the decision was made, the signs were to be placed in accord with standards developed by the highway commission. Therefore, the actual placement of the signs was ministerial. This court held that a question of fact was presented as to whether the signs in question had been properly placed. The court also concluded that the named defendants had the nondelegable duly to see that the signs were properly placed.
A different question of fact is presented here as to whether the alleged negligence is in the performance of ministerial duties by the individual defendants. It can*664not be said on the basis of the complaint that the plaintiffs will be unable to prove any set of facts in support of their claim which would entitle them to relief.
Cords, 62 Wis. 2d at 35-41 (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted).
¶ 74. This brings us back to Lister, where the court stated as follows:
The general rule is that a public officer is not personally liable to one injured as a result of an act performed within the scope of his official authority and in the line of his official duty. The various exceptions to this rule are determined by a judicial balancing of the need of public officers to perform their functions freely against the right of an aggrieved party to seek redress.
The most generally recognized exception to the rule of immunity is that an officer is liable for damages resulting from his negligent performance of a purely ministerial duty. A public officer's duty is ministerial only when it is absolute, certain and imperative, involving merely the performance of a specific task when the law imposes, prescribes and defines the time, mode and occasion for its performance with such certainty that nothing remains for judgment or discretion.
Lister, 72 Wis. 2d at 300-01 (emphasis added) (citations omitted).
¶ 75. Lister shifted the focus from liability to immunity, and it severely limited the exception to immunity by defining ministerial duty with words like "absolute, certain and imperative" that had been used many years before when governmental immunity, including municipal immunity, was still in full force. This rigid, inflexible formulation was inconsistent with cases *665like Chart and Cords. Lister never mentioned Holytz. None of the Lister justices had participated in the Holytz decision.
¶ 76. In 1977, in Lifer v. Raymond, 80 Wis. 2d 503, 259 N.W.2d 537 (1977), the supreme court rewrote history as it firmed up the effective restoration of governmental immunity. Rebutting an accident victim's exaggerated argument that under Holytz there should be no distinction between the liability of a state employee and the liability of a private citizen, the court stated as follows:
That is not what Holytz says or means. Holytz dealt with the doctrine of sovereign immunity in an action against a governmental body, not a public officer.
Although the plaintiff contends that the defendant is immune from suit only for acts which are legislative, judicial, quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial, we base our contrary conclusion on the principles of official immunity set out in Lister that the defendant is not liable for his discretionary acts. To so hold is not to imply that the test for the immunity of a state officer set out in Lister is different from the test for the immunity of a municipal officer under sec. 895.43(3), Stats. A quasi-legislative act involves the exercise of discretion or judgment in determining the policy to be carried out or the rule to be followed. A quasi-judicial act involves the exercise of discretion and judgment in the application of a rule to specific facts. Acts that are "legislative, quasi-legislative, judicial or quasi-judicial functions," are, by definition, nonministerial acts. As applied, the terms "quasi-judicial or quasi-legislative" and "discretionary" are synonymous....
Lifer, 80 Wis. 2d at 510-12 (citations omitted).
*666¶ 77. This pronouncement, unsupported by authority, changed the course of Wisconsin tort law. For, as Professor Prosser noted in his treatise, "It would be difficult to conceive of any official act, no matter how directly ministerial, that did not admit of some discretion in the manner of its performance, even if it involved only the driving of a nail." Prosser, supra, at 1017 (quoting Ham v. Los Angeles County, 189 P. 462, 468 (Cal. App. 1920)).
¶ 78. Lister, Lifer, and Kimps have become the hallmark decisions that define the militantly unprogressive state of Wisconsin law. So far as government responsibility for torts is concerned, immunity has become the rule and liability has become the rare exception. Justice has been confined to a crawl space too narrow for most tort victims to fit.
VI
¶ 79. In the case at hand, the court of appeals was forced to deal with these decisions. Umansky v. ABC Ins. Co., 2008 WI App 101, 313 Wis. 2d 445, 756 N.W.2d 601. The opinion of Judge Vergeront is scholarly, well-reasoned, and highly persuasive. Fortunately, it is being adopted by the majority in an excellent opinion by Justice Crooks. Sooner or later this court will realize that accountability is the price of justice.
¶ 80. For the reasons stated, I respectfully concur.
¶ 81. I am authorized to state that JUSTICE N. PATRICK CROOKS joins this concurrence.

 In Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, 96 So. 2d 130, 131 (Fla. 1957), a widow sued a municipality for damages for the alleged wrongful death of her husband who died of smoke suffocation after being locked in a jail that was left unattended by a municipal jailer. The Florida Supreme Court held that the widow could maintain an action against Cocoa Beach for the alleged negligence of its police officer acting in the course of his employment. Id. at 133-34. The court said the issue was "whether a municipal corporation should continue to enjoy immunity from liability for the wrongful acts of police officers." Id. at 131.

 All subsequent references to the Wisconsin Statutes are to the 2007-08 version unless otherwise indicated.

 Townsend v. Wis. Desert Horse Ass'n, 42 Wis. 2d 414, 423, 167 N.W.2d 425 (1969).

 Wisconsin Stat. § 270.58(1) (1965-66) reads as follows:
State and political subdivisions thereof to pay judgments taken against officers. (1) Where the defendant in any action or special proceeding is a public officer or employe and is proceeded against in his official capacity or is proceeded against as an individual because of acts committed while carrying out his duties as an officer or employe and the jury or the court finds that he acted in good faith the judgment as to damages and costs entered against the officer or employe shall be paid by the state or political subdivision of which he is an officer or employe. Regardless of the results of the litigation the governmental unit shall pay reasonable attorney's fees and costs of defending the action, unless it is found by the court or jury that the defendant officer or employe did not act in good faith, when it does not provide legal counsel to the defendant officer or employe. Deputy sheriffs in those counties where they serve not at the will of the sheriff but on civil service basis shall be covered by this subsection, except that the provision relating to payment of the judgment shall be discretionary and not mandatory. In such counties the judgment as to damages and costs may be paid by the county if approved by the county board.
(Emphasis added.)

 Wisconsin Stat. § 895.46(1) reads, in part, as follows:
State and political subdivisions thereof to pay judgments taken against officers. (l)(a) If the defendant in any action or special proceeding is a public officer or employee and is proceeded against in an official capacity or is proceeded against as an individual because of acts committed while carrying out duties as an officer or employee and the jury or the court finds that the *652defendant was acting within the scope of employment, the judgment as to damages and costs entered against the officer or employee in excess of any insurance applicable to the officer or employee shall be paid by the state or political subdivision of which the defendant is an officer or employee. Agents of any department of the state shall be covered by this section while acting within the scope of their agency. Regardless of the results of the litigation the governmental unit, if it does not provide legal counsel to the defendant officer or employee, shall pay reasonable attorney fees and costs of defending the action, unless it is found by the court or jury that the defendant officer or employee did not act within the scope of employment.
(Emphasis added.)

 "As a rule, a public officer, whether judicial, quasi-judicial, or executive, is not personally liable to one injured in consequence of an act performed within the scope of his official authority, and in the line of his official duty." 63 Am. Jur. 2d, Public Officers and Employees, § 288, at 798 (1972).

 Accord Seward v. Town of Milford, 21 Wis. 491 (*485), 494 (*488) (1867) (affirming judgment of negligence against the town for its failure to make a damaged roadway safe for travel by either "repairing the roadway] at once, or at least... keeping] up some suitable guards to prevent travelers from going over the dangerous track").