Court Opinion

ID: 9598855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:12:38.333544+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:42.900768
License: Public Domain

Fletcher, Justice,
concurring specially.
The extent to which law enforcement officials will be held liable for acts undertaken in the fulfillment of their duty is an especially difficult issue in the current legal atmosphere. Had Officer Dumont not pursued Cornelius and Cornelius continued to run stop signs or had Cornelius simply sped away after seeing Officer Dumont and been involved in the same accident, appellant still would be suing Officer Dumont for his failure to fulfill his duties as a law enforcement officer. See, e.g., Landis v. Rockdale County, 212 Ga. App. 700 (445 SE2d 264) (1994). Recognizing the conundrum in which law enforcement officers are placed daily, both the rule established by the Court of Appeals and the rule adopted by the majority in this case attempt to balance the necessity of police pursuit and the threat of harm to *392public safety by imposing upon officers the responsibility of using reasonable care to insure that their conduct in initiating and continuing pursuit of a fleeing offender does not pose an undue risk of harm to the public.
I fully concur with the majority opinion’s rejection of authority from other jurisdictions holding as a matter of law that an officer’s conduct in initiating and continuing pursuit of a fleeing offender can never be a proximate cause of a collision between the fleeing offender and another driver. However, I disagree with the majority’s determination that the proper inquiry in such cases is whether in initiating and continuing pursuit the law enforcement officer properly balanced the risk to the safety of other drivers. This far-reaching rule ignores the statutory privileges accorded law enforcement officers engaged in pursuit and, in effect, renders them subject to liability for the negligent acts of fleeing offenders in all cases except where it is absolutely clear that the officer’s pursuit had no effect whatsoever on the offender’s conduct or flight. See Sammor v. Mayor &c. of Savannah, 176 Ga. App. 176 (2) (335 SE2d 434) (1985).
I believe the better approach, and one recognizing the important and necessary role of police pursuit which led our legislature to grant officers engaged in such pursuits special privileges, is that adopted by the Court of Appeals. The rule established by the Court of Appeals imposes upon officers engaged in pursuit of a fleeing offender the duty not to create “a higher threat to public safety than is ordinarily incident to such high-speed pursuits.” This rule recognizes that an officer’s duty to exercise due regard for the safety of others varies with the circumstances, see Lau’s Corp. v. Haskins, 261 Ga. 491, 493 (405 SE2d 474) (1991); Prosser, Law of Torts, 5th ed., §§ 31, 33 (1984), and that as a matter of public policy, the law authorizes law enforcement officers to violate certain traffic laws while in pursuit despite the risks involved, OCGA § 40-6-6. The legislature itself, after much deliberation, balanced the public’s competing interests in effective law enforcement and safe public ways in granting such privileges.
Accordingly, like the Court of Appeals, I would hold that when an officer is involved in a high-speed chase, an act authorized by our statutes despite the inherent risks of such pursuit, it is the officer’s duty not to create through his or her conduct any greater risk to public safety than that involved in every pursuit. This rule strikes the proper balance between holding that an officer’s conduct can never be a proximate cause of a collision between the fleeing offender and another and a rule subjecting officers to liability for every injury arising from police pursuit. I concur with the majority because applying this standard to the present facts, I believe a jury would be authorized to find that Officer Dumont continued to accelerate and pursue Cornelius through a residential neighborhood for a minor traffic infraction *393and in violation of police department standard operating procedures and in doing so created a threat to public safety higher than that ordinarily incident to police pursuits.
Decided June 27, 1994 —
Reconsideration denied July 21, 1994.
Davis, Gregory & Christy, Hardy Gregory, Jr., O’Neal, Brown & Sizemore, Manley F. Brown, Carl A. Veline, Jr., for appellants.
Jones, Cork & Miller, Charles L. Ruffin, David A. Pope, Warren C. Grice, for appellees.