Court Opinion

ID: 9709671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:52:53.279412+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:50.042750
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.,
(concurring, with whom Nolan and Lynch, JJ., join). I agree with the Chief Justice, and Justices Nolan, Lynch, and Greaney, that Ware’s motion to dismiss the complaint was properly allowed, and that the resulting judgment for the defendant should be affirmed. Furthermore, I agree with Justices Wilkins, Abrams, Nolan, and Lynch that that result is incompatible with Irwin v. Ware, 392 Mass. 745 (1984), and A.L. v. Commonwealth, 402 Mass. 234 (1988). Accordingly, in the interest of predictability of the law, fairness to litigants, and judicial efficiency, I would expressly overrule Irwin and A.L., and would declare that the traditional public duty rule, including its exceptions, is the law of this Commonwealth.
*461“Negligence, without qualification and in its ordinary sense, is the failure of a responsible person, either by omission or by action, to exercise that degree of care, vigilance and forethought which, in the discharge of the duty then resting on him, the person of ordinary caution and prudence ought to exercise under the particular circumstances. It is a want of diligence commensurate with the requirement of the duty at the moment imposed by the law” (emphasis added). Altman v. Aronson, 231 Mass. 588, 591 (1919). In the absence of a duty to be careful, even carelessness which results in harm to another is not “negligence” in the legal sense and is not grounds for liability. Theriault v. Pierce, 307 Mass. 532, 533 (1940). Thus, the question in this case is not whether the alleged “negligence” of the Ware firefighters is actionable. If their conduct was “negligent,” it is actionable. The question is whether their alleged carelessness constituted negligence. The two words are not synonymous. The answer to the question whether the firefighters’ alleged carelessness constituted negligence (or gross negligence) depends on whether the firefighters owed a duty to the individual plaintiffs to exercise reasonable care in extinguishing the fire in the plaintiffs’ building — a fire that the firefighters did not originate. Only if the firefighters owed such a duty could Ware be liable in this action.
Whether, in particular circumstances, a duty is owed is a question of law, Monadnock Display Fireworks, Inc. v. Andover, 388 Mass. 153, 156 (1983), and the answer should reflect existing social values and customs and appropriate public policy. Schofield v. Merrill, 386 Mass. 244, 246-251 (1982). Those concerns require the holding in this case that, although the Ware firefighters owed the general public as a whole a duty based on their employment contracts to exercise reasonable care in extinguishing the fire in the plaintiffs’ building, they did not owe a similar duty, imposed by law, to the individual plaintiffs. Therefore, I agree with the court that the plaintiffs’ complaint “[f]ail[ed] to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.” Mass. R. Civ. P. 12 (b) (6), 365 Mass. 754 (1974).
*462The court here and now should announce its acceptance of the traditional public duty rule controlling whether the State, municipalities, or counties are liable for injuries and losses sustained by individuals as a result of a public employee’s failure to act, as required by the terms of his or her employment, to prevent or diminish the harmful consequences of a condition or situation not originally caused by the employee. That rule is that the employment duties of public officers and employees ordinarily are owed only to the city, town, county, or State with whom the officers and employees have contracted. Those duties are enforceable only administratively or by. criminal proceedings. They are not owed to individuals who may be affected by their nonfulfilment but with whom the employees have not contracted. There are two exceptions. One exception is that, when a statute expressly provides that a public servant’s employment duties are designed to benefit a specifically identified group of persons in addition to the general public, the individuals in that group are owed a special duty, violation of which may be actionable. Courts seldom apply that exception. “Despite numerous references to the statutory intent rationale, it is difficult to find cases which hold that a statute creates a special duty to a particular class of persons.” Glannon, The Scope of Liability Under the Tort Claims Act: Beyond the Public Duty Rule, 67 Mass. L. Rev. 159, 163 (1982). The other exception to the traditional public duty rule is where a “special relationship” exists between certain individuals and a public agency or employee, such that the public employee’s duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent or to minimize harm from conditions not created by the employee runs not only to the general public as a whole, but to those individuals in particular. A common thread running through the cases applying this exception is that the special relationship is found to exist when the public agency, officer, or employee has expressly or impliedly represented to an individual that special care would be taken for his or her protection, such as a police officer’s promising an informant special protection, thus justifying that individual’s reliance in a special way on the employee’s *463carrying out of his or her responsibilities. A special relationship for public duty rule purposes is not a creature of statute, but instead is created by conduct of the public agency or employee inducing reliance on the part of the injured person, much in the same way that a contract is created.
The traditional public duty rule, including its two exceptions, fairly reflects current social values and promotes sound public policy. It not only promises reasonably predictable results in cases, such as the present one, involving harm indirectly (secondarily) caused by a public employee’s failure to act in response to a situation the employee did not create, but also establishes a reasonable balance between competing values: the compensation of injured individuals and the protection of government from financial burdens of such magnitude as to threaten its ability to function. Surely, if, as Justices Wilkins and Abrams urge, the court were to conclude in this case that municipal firefighters owe individual citizens a duty of careful firefighting, violation of which would result in municipal liability, that holding would have serious, and perhaps overwhelming, ramifications for cities and towns. Would liability insurance be available at an affordable price? If not, government losses through the payment of judgments and settlement agreements could be devastating. Although G. L. c. 258, § 2 (1990 ed.), limits the amount of a public employer’s liability for the negligence of its employees to $100,000 per plaintiff, see Irwin v. Ware, supra at 766-767, there could be a large number of plaintiffs as a result of a single fire. Multiply this by the number of fires a municipality, particularly an urban municipality, must respond to per week, month or year, and the resulting potential liability would be staggering.
This case demonstrates, perhaps more forcefully than any of our earlier cases, the wisdom of the traditional public duty rule, and that Irwin v. Ware, supra, and A.L. v. Commonwealth, supra, cases in which the court did not follow that rule, should be expressly overruled. As five of the Justices recognize, those two cases are not fairly distinguishable from this case. In Irwin, police officers from the town of Ware *464failed to take into custody an intoxicated motorist they had stopped on the highway. Ten minutes later, that motorist’s vehicle collided with another vehicle causing deaths and bodily injuries. In a four-to-three decision, the court held that the officers had violated duties owed not only to the general public but specially owed to the crash victims. Justice Greaney states, ante at 458, that “[ijmportant to the [Irwin] decision were several statutes that established a police officer’s obligations in the circumstances. These statutes could fairly be construed as evincing a legislative intent to protect private individuals like the plaintiffs in Irwin from the harm posed by the intoxicated driver.” The court in Irwin, supra at 759, did cite several statutes authorizing police officers, but not obliging them, to arrest intoxicated motorists, to assist them, and to administer breath and blood tests. However, the only reference in Irwin to statutes that bear on police officers’ obligations is. the following: “Next, there are statutes requiring police officers to act. A police officer must, at least, issue a record upon a citation for each automobile law violation. G. L. c. 90C, § 2. General Laws c. 90, § 24 (1) (a) (1), makes driving while intoxicated an automobile law violation. Similarly, ‘police officers of all cities and towns . . . shall suppress and prevent all disturbances and disorder’ G. L. c. 41, § 98, as amended through St. 1970, c. 181.” Id. at 759-760. Surely, however, statutes that provide for the issuance of records upon citations for automobile law violations of every kind, of which driving while under the influence of alcohol is only one, and statutes which provide in a general way for the suppression by police officers of disturbances and disorder, do not express a legislative intent to benefit specifically identified individuals in addition to the public as a whole.
Moreover, the relative unimportance of those statutes to the decision in Irwin is made manifest by the court’s statement, id. at 756, that “[wjhere the risk created by the negligence of a municipal employee is of immediate and foreseeable physical injury to persons who cannot reasonably protect themselves, from it, a duty of care reasonably should be *465found.” There is no reference to statutes in that statement. In addition, the same message is delivered by the court, id. at 762, when it identifies foreseeability as “the most crucial factor.” Therefore, the absence of statutes relating to firefighters does not fairly distinguish this case from Irwin. The cases cannot be distinguished on the basis of foreseeability either. Indeed, the risk created by the alleged failures of the firefighters in the present case was not only foreseeable but was immediate, and was one from which the plaintiffs reasonably could not have protected themselves. The fact that Irwin involved bodily injury and this case involves property damage is inconsequential. It would make no sense to say that firefighters owe a special duty to persons injured by fire but not to persons whose homes or places of business have been destroyed in the same way. The facts of Irwin and of the instant case are too nearly identical for their resolution to be controlled by different duty rules.
Justice Greaney states that “[i]n A.L. v. Commonwealth, supra, we determined that the express and specific terms of a probation agreement imposed by a judge which prohibited a probationer (a convicted child molester) from working with children created a special relationship between children molested by the probationer and the probation officer who had failed to enforce the agreement.?’ Ante at 459. Justice Greaney seems to suggest that the terms of probation in A.L., which he characterizes as an “agreement,” were akin to the type of promise by a public agency, officer, or employee that induces reliance by an individual resulting in a “special relationship” and therefore a special duty to that individual under the traditional public duty rule. Nowhere in A.L. does the court even refer to an “agreement.” In any event, there was no promise in A.L. which induced the children’s reliance on protection being afforded by the probation officer or anyone else. For that reason, A.L. is not distinguishable from the present case because of an agreement in A.L. and not in this one.
A.L. is not distinguishable from the present case in any other way that would suggest that the result in that case is *466compatible with the court’s denial of liability in this case. There, the court concluded that a probation officer supervising the probation of a convicted child molester owed a duty not only to the general public but also to two young boys, the plaintiffs in that case, individually, to exercise care in" supervising the probationer. The court reasoned that “the conditions of probation imposed by the sentencing judge created a special relationship between [the] plaintiffs and the probation officer,” id. at 241, because (1) the conditions of probation were designed to protect young boys such as the plaintiffs; (2) it was foreseeable that the probation officer’s failure to monitor the nature of the probationer’s employment would create a risk of the harm that occurred and that the conditions of probation were designed to prevent; (3) even though nine months had elapsed between the imposition of probation and the molestation of the boys, the threat to the boys was a chronic, persistent, and known threat involving an “identifiable perpetrator”; and (4) the boys could not have reasonably protected themselves nor could their parents have protected them. Id. at 241-244. Almost identical factors are present to the same or a greater degree in the case at bar. The employment of the firefighters and their being dispatched to the plaintiffs’ building were designed to protect persons such as the plaintiffs; it was foreseeable that incompetence or carelessness on the firefighters’ part would create a risk of the harm that occurred; the foreseeable harm was immediate and its source was clearly identifiable; and the plaintiffs could not reasonably have protected themselves from the harm that occurred.
Justice Greaney states that the views I have expressed do not “adequately recognize that there is nothing here comparable to the statutes and the special agreement which were at the core of those decisions and which were critical, on the facts of those cases, to their outcome.” Ante at 459. He concludes that Irwin and A.L. “have their place in a plan of evolving law.” Ante at 459. As I hope I have made clear, the statutes and “agreement” were not critical to Irwin or A.L., and there is no significant factual difference between Irwin or *467A.L. and this case. Here the plaintiffs’ complaint was properly dismissed, and a similar result should have been reached in Irwin and A.L. Those cases should now be expressly overruled. “There should be no reluctance to overrule a decision which is wrong [especially a recent decision], either because it was not sound when originally promulgated or because subsequent events prove it to be wrong.” Commonwealth v. DeChristoforo, 360 Mass. 531, 554 (1971) (Spiegel, J., dissenting).
Overruling Irwin and A.L. would in no way “undermine” G. L. c. 258, as Justice Greaney suggests it would, “by restoring for all practical purposes, and contrary to the Legislature’s intent, a form of broad-based sovereign immunity.” Ante at 460. It is important to recognize that the public duty rule applies only to situations like those present in this case and in Irwin, supra, and its progeny, in which a plaintiff has been harmed by a condition or situation which was not originally caused by the public employee, and is attributable to the employee only in the sense that the employee failed to prevent or mitigate it. “If, in Irwin, the injuries and deaths had been directly caused by the police officer’s [careless] driving of a cruiser in the course of his employment, there would have been no call for this court to indulge in an analysis involving the public duty rule and its exceptions. In such a case, the duty owed by the police officer would not have been grounded in his employment contract but rather would have been the duty of care that every motorist owes to everyone else on the highway. See generally Glannon, The Scope of Public Liability Under the Tort Claims Act: Beyond the Public Duty Rule, 67 Mass. L. Rev. 159, 166 (1982).” Onofrio v. Department of Mental Health, 408 Mass. 605, 610 (1990), S. C., 411 Mass. 657 (1992). Thus, the overruling of Irwin and A.L. would not interfere with the Legislature’s decision to abrogate governmental immunity by imposing governmental liability “for injury or loss of property or personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any public employee while acting within the scope of his office or employment, in the same manner *468and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances.” G. L. c. 258, § 2. The statute is silent with respect to the circumstances that may give rise to the imposition on a public employee of a duty of reasonable care owed to a private individual except to say that such a duty shall be owed “in the same manner and to the same extent as [by] a private individual under like circumstances.” In the absence of special assurances having been given, the law imposes no duty on a private individual carefully to extinguish a fire he did not cause, or carefully to remove from the highway an intoxicated motorist whose intoxication or presence on the highway he did not bring about. By the express provisions of G. L. c. 258, § 2, a public employee is in no different position.
I agree with Justice Wilkins that “[a] literal application of § 2 mandates municipal liability in this case if the hypothetical private fire protection company described [in Justice Wilkins’s dissent] would be liable” (emphasis added), post at 470, but I do not agree that, in the circumstances of this case, the private fire company would have been liable. Justice Wilkins may be satisfied that the private company would have been liable, but he gives no reasons and cites no authority for that proposition. In my view, the firefighters in Justice Wilkins’s hypothetical case would have owed no duty to the plaintiffs, imposed as a matter of tort law, to exercise care to extinguish a fire they did not cause. They would have owed a contractual duty to their employer, the private company, and that company would have owed a contractual duty to Ware, but, in the absence of a specific statute or a special relationship similar to that recognized by the traditional public duty rule, the private firefighters would not have owed the plaintiffs a duty to use care to correct a situation they did not bring about. Therefore, the private employer would not have been vicariously liable to the plaintiffs, and a holding in this case that the public employer also is not liable does no violence to G. L. c. 258.
It is time for the public duty rule in Massachusetts to be made clear. The result of the court’s not overruling Irwin and *469A.L. will be the continued unpredictability of results in cases involving public employees’ failure to act in dereliction of their employment duties, and a consequent enormous waste of private and public resources in connection with needless litigation. The court should here and now announce its acceptance of the traditional public duty rule and its intention not to follow any of its earlier contrary decisions.