Court Opinion

ID: 9717096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:58:09.214216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:51.215049
License: Public Domain

RATLIFF, Judge,
concurring.
The notice given to the City by Noble pursuant to the requirements of the Indiana Tort Claims Act, Indiana Code section 34-4-16.5-7 and 9, was inadequate to apprise the City of any claim being made based upon the City's failure to erect a stop sign at the intersection.
Compliance with the statutory notice requirements of the Tort Claims Act is a procedural prerequisite to recovery against a governmental entity. Hedges v. Rawley (1981), Ind.App., 419 N.E.2d 224, trons. denied. Failure to give a timely notice to a governmental entity is a jurisdictional bar to maintaining a tort action against the entity. Teague v. Boone (1982), Ind.App., 442 N.E.2d 1119.
The notice given here made no mention whatever of the failure of the city to erect a stop sign at the intersection as a causal factor or as a basis for Noble's right of recovery against the city. Rather, the notice referred only to the failure of the city's employee to yield the right of way at an unmarked intersection. Although substantial compliance with the notice requirements of the Tort Claims Act is sufficient where the purpose of the notice requirement is satisfied, Burggrabe v. Board of Public Works of the City of Evansville (1984), Ind.App., 469 N.E.2d 1233, trons. denied, a notice which is in effect no notice of the claim asserted in the suit filed cannot, and does not suffice.
In Hedges v. Rawley (1981), Ind.App., 419 N.E.2d 224, trans. denied, we held that an action for slander against the City of Terre Haute and its sewage treatment plant superintendent, predicated upon an alleged republication of defamatory matter could not be maintained because letters which purported to constitute the tort claims notice made no mention of any republication of the slander. Hedges is controlling here. There was no notice given concerning the failure to erect a stop sign, hence, no action can be maintained against the City on that ground.
Because this case can be decided on the basis that no proper Tort Claims notice was given, and the judgment must be reversed on that ground, we do not need to decide the immunity issue which forms the basis of the majority opinion.
Assuming we are required to decide the immunity issue, I limit my concurrence to the narrow issue that the determination either to erect or not erect a stop sign at the intersection in question was a discretionary act and thereby immune under Indiana Code section 84-4-16.5-8. In other words, the decision of whether or not traffic control or regulatory devices such as stop signs and yield signs should be erected at a given location is discretionary. On the other hand, the installation of warning signs at dangerous locations well may be a purely ministerial act. State v. Magnuson 488 N.E.2d 743 (1986). Magnuson involved the widening of a highway leaving a culvert protruding into the traveled portion. There, we held the decision to widen the highway was discretionary but that the installation of signs or devices to warn of the protruding culvert was ministerial, Likewise, in State v. Willian (1981), Ind.App., 423 N.E.2d 668, we stated that among the evidence supporting a finding of negligence in the design, construction, or maintenance of the highway in question was that there were no "slippery when wet" signs in the area. Willian, 423 N.E.2d at 673. Subject to the limitation which I have expressed, I concur in the determination that the City's decision not to erect a stop sign at the intersection in question was a discretionary act.