Court Opinion

ID: 9730302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:07:38.251886+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:05.622955
License: Public Domain

SHIELEY S. ABEAHAMSON, J.
(dissenting). For purposes of this proceeding, which is still at the pleading stage, the municipality admits that in fulfilling its contract to remove snow from a highway, the municipality negligently deposited snow in the median obstructing visibility at an intersection and negligently failed to remove the snow it had deposited. The municipality *542further admits that its negligence caused the plaintiffs personal injury.
On the basis of the complaint, the majority holds that public policy considerations require that the municipality be immune from liability for its negligent acts. I am not persuaded by the majority’s reasoning.
This court has repeatedly said that “[t]he policy of Wisconsin tort law, a liberal one, is to compensate those who are injured by negligent acts.” Hartridge v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 86 Wis. 2d 1, 9, 271 N.W.2d 598 (1978). Yet in this case the majority finds that the general public policy that a tortfeasor compensate the victim must yield to the following two public policy considerations:
“(1) allowance of recovery would place too unreasonable a burden on the county and
“(2) allowance of recovery would enter a field that has no sensible or just stopping point.” Slip op., p. 539, supra.
The first public policy consideration upon which the majority relies suggests that immunity is being conferred not because of the facts and circumstances of the case but because of the governmental status of the defendant. I object to that reasoning because the doctrine of municipal immunity no longer exists in this state. In Holytz v. Milwaukee, 17 Wis. 2d 26, 39, 115 N.W.2d 618 (1962), we said that “so far as governmental responsibility for torts is concerned, the rule is liability— the exception is immunity.” Furthermore, we concluded in Holytz that the legislature, not this court, has the power to reinstate municipal immunity or to impose limitations on municipal tort liability. In Holytz we wrote:
“If the legislature deems it better public policy, it is, of course, free to reinstate immunity. The legislature may also impose ceilings on the amount of damages or set up administrative requirements which may be pre*543liminary to the commencement of judicial proceedings for an alleged tort.” 17 Wis. 2d at 40.
I conclude that the majority is exercising an exclusively legislative power if it is saying that as a matter of public policy the defendant’s status as a municipality makes it immune from tort liability in this case.
In addition, the majority’s emphasis on the status of the defendant as a municipality is unpersuasive because the municipality does not appear to have been performing a governmental act. It was performing a contract from which it collected revenue.* A private corporate entity could have performed. a contract for the same services. I doubt that the majority would have made a private corporation immune from liability as a matter of law at the pleading stage. Unless the legislature provides otherwise, a municipality which undertakes a contractual duty should, like a private entity which undertakes the same contractual duty, be subject to liability for failing to exercise reasonable care in performing that duty. Dunwiddie v. Rock County, 28 Wis. 2d 568, 137 N.W.2d 388 (1965).
Finally, the majority makes no showing that liability would impose an unreasonable burden on the municipality in this case. As Professor Van Alstyne notes:
“The fear that large unanticipated impositions upon public funds will be required to satisfy tort damage claims is exaggerated; the ready availability of liability insurance provides adequate protection at moderate cost which may be budgeted in advance. Private corporate enterprises with substantial potential risk exposures *544have managed to bear the burdens of general tort liabilities without observable detriment to operational success, and there is little reason to believe that public entities would not do likewise.” Van Alstyne, Governmental Tort Liability: A Decade of Change, 1966 U. Ill. L.F. 919, 921 (1966).
The second public policy consideration upon which the majority relies is that allowing recovery in this case would open a floodgate of litigation “that has no sensible or just stopping point.” Slip op., p. 539, supra. I disagree. Liability would be specific and well defined, being limited to injuries caused when a municipality contracts to remove snow from the highway and negligently deposits and fails to remove “mounds of snow on median strips adjacent to intersections which subsequently obstruct drivers’ vision” (p. 535, supra). Our decision would not subject municipalities to liability in cases which have not arisen and are not being considered by this court.
Neither of the majority’s public policy arguments convinces me that this case deserves to be treated as an exception to the general rule that tortfeasors should compensate their victims. The best way to balance the interests of the injured person and the interests of the municipality is through traditional tort and negligence law. The law does not expect officials to do the impossible or the unreasonable. In order for the plaintiffs in this case to convince the fact finder that the county was negligent, that is, that the county exposed them to an unreasonable risk of harm, they would have to demonstrate that the likelihood and gravity of the threatened harm outweighed both the utility of the conduct and the burden on the county of removing the danger. In making that determination in this case the fact finder would consider such factors as whether the county had notice of the dangerous condition, the length of time the snow had *545been piled on the median, the availability and cost of personnel and equipment to remove the snow, the availability of places to pile the snow, the weather conditions at the time, and the amount of traffic on the highway. The traditional cause requirement, that is, that the negligence was a substantial factor in producing the plaintiffs’ injuries, in conjunction with the other elements of a cause of action for negligence, operates to prevent the imposition of an excessive burden on the county. See State v. Abbott, 498 P.2d 712, 725 (Alaska 1972).
If the fact finder concludes that the municipality was causally negligent, the circuit court can then consider, as we suggested in Coffey v. Milwaukee, 74 Wis. 2d 526, 543, 247 N.W.2d 132 (1976), whether public policy requires that the municipality be relieved from liability. Once the facts have been fully developed, it may become apparent to the trial judge that the injury was too remote from the negligence or too wholly out of proportion to the culpability of the negligent tortfeasor; in retrospect it may appear too highly extraordinary that the negligence brought about the harm. If so, allowing recovery might place too unreasonable a burden on an entity contracting to remove snow from highways or might cause the court to enter a field that has no sensible or just stopping point.
I would reverse the decision of the court of appeals and remand this case to the trial court for a trial on the issue of negligence.
I am authorized to state that Justice William A. Bablitch joins in this dissent.

 Since Holytz, it has been unnecessary to separate a municipality’s operations into those that are proprietary and those that are governmental in order to determine the municipality’s tort liability. 17 Wis. 2d at 39-40. The municipality is liable in tort for both types of operations but is not liable in tort for quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions.