Court Opinion

ID: 9627149
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:36:06.743785+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:40.432348
License: Public Domain

JACKSON, Judge
(concurring):
Although I concur in the result reached by the majority and in most of its analysis, I write separately to disassociate myself from the faulty analysis of the governmental immunity issue. Contrary to the majority’s characterization, supra at 6, UDOT’s general activity in this case does not consist of “designing and maintaining a road.” It consists of the installation and improvement of traffic safety devices and signs at railroad crossings. As for the specific, purportedly negligent act by UDOT, plaintiffs in this case alleged that UDOT negligently failed to install a different, presumably safer, kind of traffic warning device at a railroad crossing. The same claims were raised by the plaintiff in Gleave v. Denver & Rio Grande W.R., 749 P.2d 660 (Utah Ct.App.), cert. denied, 765 P.2d 1278 (1988). As the majority recognizes, the outcome in this case is controlled by Gleave, in which we held that (1) UDOT’s general activity in evaluating, installing, maintaining, and improving safety signals or devices at railroad crossings is a governmental function within Utah Code Ann. § 63-30-3 (1986) under the test set forth in Standiford v. Salt Lake City Corp., 605 P.2d 1230 (Utah 1980); and (2) the specific act of UDOT which the plaintiff claimed was negligent, i.e., the failure to upgrade safety devices at a particular railroad crossing, arose out of the exercise of a discretionary function, under the test in Little v. Utah State Div. of Family Servs., 667 P.2d 49, 51 (Utah 1983), for which immunity had not been waived by Utah Code Ann. § 63-30-10(l)(a) (1986).
The majority appears unaware of the two-step analysis — used, for example, in Gleave and Rocky Mt. Thrift Stores v. Salt Lake City Corp., 784 P.2d 459 (Utah 1989) —that is necessary to resolve a governmental immunity claim in which the parties contest whether, even if the general activity is a governmental function, the allegedly negligent act arose out of the exercise of a “discretionary function” under section 63-30-10(1). If the general activity under consideration is not a governmental function within the meaning of section 63-30-3, then there is no immunity. If the general activity is a governmental function, then the Little test must be applied to determine if the specific, allegedly negligent act or omission is purely discretionary under sec*603tion 63-30-10(l)(a). If it is purely discretionary, then immunity has not been waived by section 63-30-10(l)(a). If it is not purely discretionary, then immunity has been waived by section 63-30-10(1).
The failure to appreciate the difference between these two distinct inquiries apparently underlies the majority’s confusing attempt to harmonize the results in Bowen v. Riverton City, 656 P.2d 434 (Utah 1982) and Richards v. Leavitt, 716 P.2d 276 (Utah 1985) (per curiam) with Standiford and Gleave. Governmental immunity was not even an issue in Bowen, a case involving the allegedly negligent failure of the city to maintain a stop sign that had been knocked down, so it is not really surprising that no mention was made of Standiford. It is the substance of the issues actually raised and of the tacit assumptions made in Bowen, not the case’s procedural posture, that is important. The summary judgment in favor of the city, which the supreme court reversed in Bowen, had been granted on the basis that the city was not negligent as a matter of law on the undisputed facts; the summary judgment was not granted on the basis of any immunity. The first unspoken assumption in Bowen, which was subsequently the express holding in Leavitt, 716 P.2d at 279, is that the maintenance and repair of traffic signs is a governmental function. Leavitt, which also involved a municipality’s failure to maintain a traffic control device at a highway intersection, addressed another issue not raised in Bowen, i.e., whether immunity for the exercise of that governmental function had been statutorily waived. The court in Bowen tacitly assumed that it had, or the summary judgment in favor of the municipality could have been affirmed on the alternate ground of immunity. The Leavitt court concluded that the immunity provided to the city by section 63-30-3 for its activities in maintaining traffic control devices had been expressly waived by section 63-30-8 “for any injury caused by a defective, unsafe, or dangerous condition of any highway, road, street, alley, crosswalk, sidewalk, culvert, tunnel, bridge, viaduct, or other structure located thereon.” Relying on its prior decision in Bigelow v. Ingersoll, 618 P.2d 50 (Utah 1980), decided two years before Bowen, the Leavitt court reaffirmed that the express waiver of immunity in section 63-30-8 is not subject to the section 63-30-10(l)(a) discretionary function exception to the waiver of immunity. The court thus read section 63-30-8 as expressing the legislature’s view that an act or omission in the exercise of a governmental function that created a “defective, unsafe, or dangerous condition” on a public way could never involve activity at the basic policy-making level for which immunity is preserved by section 63-30-10(l)(a).
Unlike the plaintiffs in Leavitt and Bigelow, however, but exactly like the injured plaintiff and appellant railroad in Gleave, 749 P.2d at 667 & n. 6, the plaintiffs in this case have never pleaded or contended that the discretionary function analysis under section 63-30-10(l)(a) is unnecessary and irrelevant because the decedents’ injuries resulted from an unsafe or dangerous condition on a road within the purview of section 63-30-8. Instead, they asked the trial court and us to overrule one of the two aforementioned holdings in Gleave and conclude either that (1) UDOT’s evaluation, installation, maintenance, and improvement of safety signals or devices at railroad crossings is not a governmental function within section 63-30-3; or (2) UDOT’s failure to install upgraded safety devices at the subject railroad crossing did not arise out of a section 63-30-10(l)(a) discretionary function.
Since my colleagues and I have unanimously declined the invitation to abandon Gleave, it is unfortunate that the majority adds confusion to an already difficult area of law in its flawed analysis of Leavitt and Bowen, which should be disregarded as dicta.