Court Opinion

ID: 9706675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:49:14.470666+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:24.339100
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Judge Palladino:
I respectfully dissent to the majority opinion.
The majority concludes that the police officer owed a duty to stop and render assistance to the occupants of a disabled vehicle and “to approaching motorists who would foreseeably come into contact with the disabled vehicle,” majority op. at 4, and that the police officer’s failure to stop upon seeing the disabled vehicle (which Socarras shortly thereafter struck) was a breach of the police officer’s duty to both. In reaching this conclusion, the majority relies on the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Mindala v. American Motors Corp., 518 Pa. 350, 543 A.2d 520 (1988) (affirmance by equally divided court). I believe the majority has misapplied the Mindala decision.
Initially, I note that the issue which must be decided in this case is whether the police officer owed a duty to Socarras, who was the operator of the vehicle which struck the disabled vehicle and who is the plaintiff in this action. There is no need to consider whether a duty was owed to the occupants of the disabled vehicle.
Supreme Court Justice ZAPPALA, in his opinion in support of affirmance in Mindala, set forth the following test for determining whether a duty to act or conform to a certain standard of conduct should be imposed on a municipal defendant in a negligence action: “[I]n reviewing whether a duty exists the court must determine the relationship between the parties and balance the various *203competing interests and costs involved in providing the requested protection.” Id. at 358, 543 A.2d at 524. This court has recently followed that test in Huber v. Department of Transportation, 122 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 82, 551 A.2d 1130 (1988). Mindala is similar to the instant case in that the negligence alleged was the failure of the police to take action which allegedly would have prevented the harm suffered by a motorist in a traffic accident. The majority was correct in looking to Mindala for guidance but incorrect in determining that the reasons for finding a duty in Mindala were also present here.
Justice ZAPPALA concluded that the police officer in Mindala owed a duty, which was breached, to the motorists injured in an intersection collision, where a stop sign was missing from one of the intersecting roads, for the following reasons:
Since the township police possessed statutory authority to regulate traffic, had knowledge of a dangerous situation, and the capability to rectify the problem, a duty was created to reasonably exercise that authority and the failure to do so violated that duty.
Id. at 363, 543 A.2d at 527. Close examination of the facts in this case show that those factors are not present here.
The first factor given by Justice ZAPPALA for imposing a duty was the statutory authority of the police to regulate traffic. That factor was relevant in Mindala because the alleged cause of the harm, a missing stop sign, was a traffic signal. The alleged cause of the harm here, a disabled vehicle, is not. The second factor was knowledge of a dangerous situation. In Mindala, the police knew the stop sign was missing for more than 24 hours prior to the accident and failed to take action. Here, the police knew about the disabled vehicle for 2.5—5 minutes prior to the *204accident. The third factor given by Justice Zappala was the capability to rectify the problem. The police in Mindala had available to it a portable stop sign. In the instant case, the majority, unlike Justice ZAPPALA in Mindala, does not indicate how the police officer in this case could have rectified the situation in order to have prevented the accident. The majority merely concludes that the police officer had such capability.1 Nothing in the stipulation of facts indicates that the police officer had such capability at his disposal. It is also quite improbable that the dangerous situation could have been rectified in the 2.5—5 minutes during which the police officer knew of the existence of the disabled vehicle.
Justice ZAPPALA’s opinion in Mindala makes clear that whether a duty is owed by the police to a particular plaintiff must be determined on the basis of the facts of the situation in which the duty is alleged to be owed. As pointed out, the facts of the situation in this case are very different from those in Mindala. It is clear to me that the police officer here, irrespective of any duty he might have owed to the occupants of the disabled vehicle, owed no duty to Socarras. I would affirm the decision of the trial court.

 We note that this accident occurred on Interstate 95 in Philadelphia at 3 P. M.