Court Opinion

ID: 9730062
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:59:57.951952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:03.760803
License: Public Domain

RATTIGAN, J.
I dissent. I first disagree with the main opinion’s conclusion that the defendant police officers, upon the facts pleaded here and as a matter of law, were immune from negligence liability under Government Code section 821.6. The Legislature’s purpose in enacting section 821.6 was to grant public employees discretionary immunity from liability for the tort of malicious prosecution, not from liability for their nondiscretionary conduct amounting to negligence. (Van Alstyne, Cal. Government Tort Liability (Cont. Ed. Bar 1964) §§ 5.63-5.64, pp. 170-172; Legislative Committee Comments, § 821.6 and proposed [but not enacted] § 816, reprinted in Van Alstyne (op. cit.) at p. 531; A Study Relating to Sovereign Immunity (1963) 5 Cal. Law Revision Com. Rep. 411-415. See Van Alstyne, op. cit. (1969 Supp.), § 5.63, pp. 24-25 [criticizing, for failure to observe the above-stated distinction, Watson v. County of Los Angeles (1967) 254 Cal.App.2d 361 [62 Cal.Rptr. 191], discussed infra].)
Plaintiff’s complaint accords him the benefit of the distinction between discretionary and nondiscretionary immunity; as the main opinion indicates, he has effectively alleged his claim (“surprising” or not) that the officers had no discretion in the performance of their duties and exercised none. A second distinction operates in his favor because he pleads no cause of action for malicious prosecution against anyone (and on the appeal has disavowed any intent or attempt to do so), but has fairly stated facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action for negligence against the officers. Because negligence and malicious prosecution are wholly distinct torts (see Maxon v. Security Ins. Co. (1963) 214 Cal.App.2d 603, 615 [29 Cal.Rptr. 586]), I am not persuaded that immunity from liability for one was granted by a legislative enactment (§ 821.6) which was avowedly directed to the other. In this regard, I have in mind the Supreme Court’s admonition that “The 1963 Tort Claims Act did not alter the basic teaching of Muskopf v. Corning Hospital Dist., ... 55 Cal.2d 211, 219: ‘when there is negligence, the rule is liability, immunity is the exception.’ ” (Johnson v. State of California (1968) 69 Cal.2d 782, 798 [73 Cal.Rptr. 240, 447 P.2d 352]. See Van Alstyne, op. cit. supra (1964 ed.) § 7.3, p. 285.)
In my view, the event of “instituting” a “judicial proceeding” (the Legislature’s words in § 821.6) occurs only when a public-employee actor sets the judicial process in motion by going to court. Until that happens, there is no “judicial proceeding” (see Rupley v. Johnson (1953) 120 Cal. App.2d 548, 553 [261 P.2d 318]) and the actor’s functions do not amount *90to one. (Vargas v. Giacosa (1953) 121 Cal.App.2d 521, 527-528 [263 P.2d 840]; Hayashida v. Kakimoto (1933) 132 Cal.App. 743, 746 [23 P.2d 311].) The Vargas and Hayashida decisions have been disapproved insofar as they held that a malicious prosecution action did not lie for instituting a “proceeding” before an administrative—as distinguished from, a judicial— tribunal. (Hardy v. Vial (1957) 48 Cal.2d 577, 581-582 [311 P.2d 494].) The disapproval, however, did not reach the essential Vargas-Hayashida point that for purposes of a malicious prosecution action a “proceeding” does not begin in theory until it begins in fact. All three decisions (Vargas, Hayashida and Hardy) involved malicious prosecution actions. Since the Legislature had malicious prosecution in mind when it enacted section 821.6 (as it stated in the committee comments cited supra1 and in the main opinion) it must have intended to draw the immunity line at the point where the actor goes to court and not sooner. That the result may be “anomalous” was and is the Legislature’s problem, not ours; and I am unwilling to ignore reasonably clear legislative intent for the purpose of avoiding anomaly. I therefore disagree with the main opinion’s thesis that causing the institution of a judicial proceeding (which means preceding it, as plaintiff has alleged here) is the same as “instituting” one within the meaning of Government Code section 821.6.
This position prompts me to note that the defendant city’s argument for immunity is principally based upon Watson v. County of Los Angeles (1967) 254 Cal.App.2d 361 [62 Cal.Rptr. 191] (which the trial court followed in sustaining the city’s demurrer) and Stearns v. County of Los Angeles (1969) 275 Cal.App.2d 134 [79 Cal.Rptr. 757]. Because my colleagues’ opinions do not (as, in light of their conclusions, they need not) reach this argument, I would discuss it here. The Watson court held that certain public employees (two court clerks) were immune from liability where the civil complaint against them showed that the plaintiff’s injury *91was the result of their negligence in the conduct of a criminal prosecution (of the plaintiff) which had already been instituted, and which was pending in their court, when they were negligent. As this time sequence in Watson was pointed out in both decisions (Watson v. County of Los Angeles, supra, at p. 363 [as quoted in Stearns v. County of Los Angeles, supra, at p. 145]), 1 can readily distinguish Watson from the present case because under the Watson time sequence the employees were immune from liability for their conduct in “prosecuting” a “judicial proceeding” within the plain meaning of section 821.6.
In Stearns an attempted cause of action alleged that the extrajudicial negligence of a public employee (a deputy county coroner) caused a criminal prosecution of the plaintiff to be instituted afterward. (Stearns v. County of Los Angeles, supra, 275 Cal.App.2d 134 at pp. 136, 137.) The court applied Watson reasoning (id., at p. 137 [“the same reasoning is applicable here”]) to hold the employee immune under the same statute. But the Stearns complaint did not charge the employee with “prosecuting” a judicial proceeding, because it alleged that his negligence preceded the criminal prosecution which resulted; nor did it charge him with “instituting” the criminal proceeding. For these reasons I cannot conclude, as the Stearns court did (id.), that Watson reasoning should have applied to produce a Watson result in the later case. Distinguishing Watson on its facts because they differ from those pleaded here, and Stearns on its law because I disagree with it, I would follow neither decision in the present case.
The concurring opinion holds that causation, as an indispensable element of a negligence cause of action, is absent here as a matter of law. In a negligence action, however, the pleading of proximate cause in general terms—as plaintiff has done here—is good against a general demurrer (Guilliams v. Hollywood Hospital (1941) 18 Cal.2d 97, 103 [114 P.2d 1]; 2 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (1954) Pleading, § 305, pp. 1282-1283), and the defendant city’s demurrer therefore admitted the allegations of proximate cause. (Cameron v. Wernick (1967) 251 Cal.App.2d 890, 892 [60 Cal.Rptr. 102]; 2 Witkin, op. cit. supra, Pleading, § 484, p. 1471.) In my view, the concurring opinion confuses the element of proximate cause, validly pleaded, with the prospect that independent intervening causation will be shown in plaintiff’s proof. For this reason, I disagree with it.
I would hold that upon the facts pleaded here the defendant police officers are not immune from liability for their negligence under Government Code section 821.6, which means that the city is not immune under section 815.2, subdivision (b), and that a cause of action is stated against it under subdivision (a) thereof. The contrary determination reflected in this judgment, *92in my opinion, effects a result which the Legislature did not intend in enacting section 821.6, and which the rules of pleading should not permit. I would therefore reverse it.
A petition for a rehearing was denied February 20, 1970. Rattigan, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied April 1, 1970.

I would note, of each of the malicious prosecution decisions mentioned by the Legislature in the committee comments, that the defendants held immune from liability had in fact “instituted” the judicial or other proceedings involved. (See Hardy v. Vial (1957) 48 Cal.2d 577, 580 [311 P.2d 494]; Cover stone v. Davies (1952) 38 Cal.2d 315, 322 [239 P.2d 876]; White v. Towers (1951) 37 Cal.2d 727, 733 [235 P.2d 209, 28 A.L.R.2d 636] (see also the reference to White in Hardy v. Vial, supra, at p. 582); Dawson v. Martin (1957) 150 Cal.App.2d 379, 381 [309 P.2d 915].) It also bears mentioning that, in another context but upon a recommendation from the same commission which came up with the Tort Claims Act of 1963, the Legislature has established that a “proceeding” (including a “criminal proceeding”) begins only when the government’s power to compel testimony is invoked. (See Evid. Code, §§ 901, 903; id., Legislative Committee Comments, §§ 901, 910; 6 Cal. Law Revision Com. Rep. (1964) 309-327; id. vol. 7 (1965), pp. 157-160.) In the conventional police-investigation situation alleged here, this point is not reached.