Court Opinion

ID: 9623641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:38:57.094294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:49:34.849778
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ and COMPTON, Justices,
concurring.
I write separately to emphasize two points which I believe are implicit in today’s opinion.
The first is that lowering speed limits, whether this is done by an agency pursuant to 13 AAC 02.280 or by a State Trooper as part of enforcing the basic speed rule set out in 13 AAC 02.275(a), is a discretionary function under the immunity statute. Each decision of this sort is likely to depend on specific facts which call for a responsible official’s intelligent judgment. Unlike decisions on how to build airport taxiways, Japan Air Lines Co., Ltd. v. State, 628 P.2d 934 (Alaska 1981), or decisions on how roadway stripes should be placed, State v. I’Anson, 529 P.2d 188 (Alaska 1974), decisions on whether safety problems require speed limits to be lowered cannot even in theory be reduced to a set of specifications. They depend on discretion, and the court holds today that the State is not liable even if one of its officers reduces speed limits in *285a way a factfinder might later term negligent.1
Nor can Trooper Harrel himself be held liable, even if his decision was negligent. If he made a mistake, it was a “mistake in judgment or discretion.” State v. Stanley, 506 P.2d 1284, 1292 (Alaska 1973). We said in Stanley that State employees are immune, under the common law, for mistaken “discretionary judgment-policy decisions.” Id. Comparing Stanley’s facts with the facts now before us is instructive. The plaintiff in Stanley alleged that a State employee, temporarily responsible for the plaintiffs boat, failed to check its valves and pumps, inspect the bilges, or instruct the people aboard about what to do if the vessel began to take on water. The boat then sank. We held that common-law immunity did not protect the State employee from a lawsuit based on these allegations. Here, in contrast, Trooper Harrel was not confronted with a simple set of tasks to perform. He had complaints to investigate, a highway to examine, and a difficult judgment call to make. Holding Trooper Harrel personally liable for a mistaken judgment would be inconsistent with Stanley.2

. It is noteworthy that in its briefing Earth Movers has not suggested any standards against which one might judge Trooper Harrel’s decision.

. I do not mean to imply that the common-law immunity Stanley discussed is always co-extensive with the State’s "discretionary function” immunity, set out in AS 09.50.250(1). In my view common-law individual immunity should sometimes be broader. See, e.g., Owen v. City of Independence, 445 U.S. 622, 100 S.Ct. 1398, 63 L.Ed.2d 673 (1980) (municipalities may be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 even when municipal employees are personally immune).