Court Opinion

ID: 9571889
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:36:05.233533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:08.886224
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE LACY,
with whom JUSTICE COMPTON joins, dissenting.
In Commonwealth v. Millsaps, 232 Va. 502, 509, 352 S.E.2d 311, 315 (1987), this Court said, “it has not been the policy of the law of Virginia to facilitate litigation by such public officers as a means of compensating them for injuries received in the line of duty, but rather to impose that burden on the public generally, through workers’ compensation and other benefits.” This conclusion was frustrated in Benefiel v. Walker, 244 Va. 488, 422 S.E.2d 773 (1992). See id. at 496-97, 422 S.E.2d at 778 (Compton, J., with whom Lacy, J., joined, dissenting). Today the Court again rejects this policy.
The fireman’s rule is based on the concept of assumption of the risk and the single relevant test is whether the risk involved was beyond the usual risk or hazard contemplated in the officer’s work. “If injured while encountering the ordinary hazards his duty requires him to confront, it is immaterial that the fire was negligently set.” Chesapeake & O. Ry. v. Crouch, 208 Va. 602, 608, 159 S.E.2d 650, 654, cert. denied, 393 U.S. 845 (1968). It is equally immaterial whether that hazard arose as a result of the actor’s intentional act. What is material is whether the act was a usual risk or risk inherent in the officer’s duty and, therefore, within the ambit of the assumption of risk doctrine. To reject the fireman’s rule solely because the act causing the injury was intentional is overly simplistic. An intentional act may not fall within the ambit of the ordinary hazards of the officer’s work; however, to determine whether it does, the act itself must be considered. To decide the issue solely on a finding that an act was intentional rather than negligent, as the majority has done, ignores the rationale of the fireman’s rule.
The majority also seeks to justify its result on the belief that the burden for financial loss based on negligent acts is appropriately placed on the public through workers’ compensation and other benefits, but that public expenditure is not appropriate when the loss is due to an intentional act. This policy is flawed, however, because *406workers’ compensation benefits are available, and are the exclusive remedy in many cases, for intentional as well as negligent acts whether the employment is in the public or private sector. Once again, the rationale for compensating work-related injuries through workers’ compensation, paid for through the public fisc in the case of police officers, is grounded in the concept that the injury was within the inherent risks of the job, not in the nature of the act causing the injury.
In this case, an officer was attempting to arrest a suspect and the suspect resisted the arrest. In the course of resisting the arrest, the suspect hit and injured the officer. I cannot conceive of a hazard more naturally or commonly inherent in the occupation of a police officer than that of a suspect resisting arrest and of that resistance being accompanied by force.
Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.