Court Opinion

ID: 9649387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:51:34.36859+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:10.449099
License: Public Domain

Larrow, J.
(concurring in result). I agree with my brothers that this case must be reversed and remanded, but I cannot subscribe to the reasoning on which they reach that result. It is all very well to opine that legal questions should not be decided in a vacuum, whatever that phrase may mean, but a decision on abstract principles is not necessarily “in a vacuum.” If it were, dismissal for failure to state a cause of action would be an impossibility, and our rules relating thereto completely meaningless. V.R.C.P. 12(b), 12(c), 12(h)(2); Reporter’s Notes to V.R.C.P. 56 (c).
However denominated and treated by the court below, what we are dealing with here is a dismissal for that reason, on the State’s motion. It is not a Rule 56 motion for summary judgment because despite the form recital contained in the cryptic judgment order there was nothing except the pleadings before the court for its consideration. Arguments and memoranda are not “matters outside the pleading^” which convert a Rule 12(c) motion for judgment into a Rule 56 motion for summary judgment. Cf. Wright and Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil, § 1366.
So viewed, the motion should have been denied, not for the reasons stated in the majority opinion, but because the complaint stated a cause of action in precisely the manner our rules contemplate. I agree that the factual question of whether the State purchased applicable liability insurance may have an important bearing. But the complaint alleges that it did and this is all we need presently consider, because 29 V.S.A. § 1403 says such action waives sovereign immunity. Pleading the purchase fulfills plaintiff’s burden of negating immunity under Lemieux v. City of St. Albans, 112 Vt. 512, 28 A.2d 373 (1942).
I agree with my brothers that this case involves “important legal issues of potentially far-reaching dimension.” I concur in their enumeration of those issues. I share their very evident concern that plaintiff has many hurdles to surmount and that *365some of Ms allegations may well be difficult to establish. But the “careful consideration of their factual background” is a matter for trial, and so is “a further development of the circumstances surrounding the alleged negligence.”
The questions which seem to vex the majority are ones which may become “potentially dispositive” on trial, when raised by motion for directed verdict or submitted for jury decision. But they are, as of now, a future thicket into which we need not venture. Our sole question is not whether or not plaintiff has a cause of action, but whether he has alleged one. In my view, he has. Simply put, he has alleged that defendant Woodruff, as an agent and employee of the State, was negligent, that plaintiff was charged with murder as a result, and that sovereign immunity has been waived by the State’s purchase of liability insurance coverage. These claims may be denied, as they are; immunity and privilege may be claimed, as they are. But the simple fact remains that, whether he can prove it or not, plaintiff has alleged a cause of action. If he has not, we should strike Form 9 from our Appendix of Forms and V.R.C.P. 84, ruling it sufficient, from our Rules of Civil Procedure.
The motion below can be nothing but a motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action. I do not regard such motions as being “in a vacuum.” They are equivalent to common law demurrers, which courts have dealt with for many centuries. All that our rules require are the “seemingly straight-forward complaint” the majority speaks of. V.R.C.P. 8(a). The complaint filed below meets that test, and the motion below should-have been denied. Indeed, I am at a loss to understand how a reversal and remand can be made at all if the majority entertains any view that the complaint was insufficient. Affirmance would be required, not reversal.