Court Opinion

ID: 9702318
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:06:45.319812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:36.540134
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring:
Although I join the opinion of the court — -indeed, I am its author — I think it appropriate to recognize that some members of our court have expressed the view that, in the District of Columbia, the public duty doctrine has been applied too expansively and too rigidly. See Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1, 9-12 (D.C.1981) (en banc) (Kelly, J., joined by Mack, J., and, in part, by Newman, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); Powell v. District of Columbia, 602 A.2d 1123, 1132-37 (D.C.1992) (Schwelb, J., concurring in the judgment). In Chambers-Castanes v. King County, 100 Wash.2d 275, 669 P.2d 451, 458 n. 5 (1983), the Supreme Court of Washington, while upholding the public duty doctrine in principle, severely *1249criticized our earlier cases for applying the doctrine too inflexibly. In Fochtman v. Honolulu Police & Fire Departments, 65 Haw. 180, 649 P.2d 1114 (1982), the court sustained the sufficiency of a complaint comparable to Ms. Miller’s allegations in this case, but this court expressly declined to follow Fochtman in Allison Gas Turbine v. District of Columbia, 642 A.2d 841, 846 (D.C.1994).
The public duty doctrine might fairly be characterized as the stepchild of sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity originated with the purported belief (mostly held by kings, queens, princesses and princes) in the divine right of kings. That belief — and one tends to believe whatever is to one’s advantage — translated into the doctrine that the king can do no wrong. But when the District of Columbia — today’s analogue of those who sat on the throne — wrongs one or more individuals, it should not too readily be permitted to escape liability for the harm that it has caused.
I continue to agree with the following statement by the Supreme Court of Arizona:
There is perhaps no doctrine more firmly established than the principle that liability follows tortious wrongdoing; that where negligence is the proximate cause of injury, the,rule is liability and immunity is the exception.
Stone v. Ariz. Highway Comm’n, 98 Ariz. 384, 381 P.2d 107, 112 (1963), quoted in Powell, 602 A.2d at 1134 (Schwelb, J., concurring in the judgment). In an -appropriate future case, our en banc court should consider whether some of our decisions expounding the public duty doctrine are too much at odds with the foregoing proposition.