Anicet v. Gant

• Decision Date: 14 May 1991
• Docket Number: No. 90-547,90-547
• Citation: 580 So.2d 273
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals
• Parties: Edgar ANICET, Appellant, v. Preston GANT, Appellee. 580 So.2d 273, 16 Fla. L. Week. D1305

Page 273

580 So.2d 273

Edgar ANICET, Appellant, v. Preston GANT, Appellee.

No. 90-547.

580 So.2d 273, 16 Fla. L. Week. D1305

District Court of Appeal of Florida Third District.

May 14, 1991.

Rehearing Denied June 28, 1991.

Ponzoli & Wassenberg and Richard Wassenberg and Steven B. Sundook, Miami, for appellant.

James C. Blecke, Miami, Benjamin D. Rust, South Miami, for appellee.

Before SCHWARTZ, C.J., and BARKDULL and NESBITT, JJ.

SCHWARTZ, Chief Judge.

This case comes straight from a difficult exam question in Torts I. We must decide whether a violently insane person confined to a mental institution is liable to one of his attendants for injuries caused by his violent act. Contrary to the result below, we hold that there is no such liability.

The legal problem comes to us on an undisputed factual record which imposes no tangential impediment to resolving it as a matter of law. The defendant-appellant, Edgar Anicet, is a twenty-three year old man, who has suffered from irremediable mental difficulties all his life. After intermittent treatment and hospitalizations both in this country and his native Haiti, he was involuntarily committed in 1986 under the terms of the Baker Act, sections 394.451-394.4785, Florida Statutes (1985), to the South Florida State Hospital, where he has remained ever since. Among the most severe features of his illness, manifested both before and during his hospitalizations, is an inability to control himself from acts of violence which specifically included throwing rocks, chairs and other objects at persons nearby. Largely because of that tendency, Anicet was confined to the hospital ward designed for the lowest functioning and most dangerous patients. On the day of the incident in question, January 15, 1988, he was present in a locked "day room" with some fifteen to twenty other patients on that ward.

The plaintiff-appellee, Preston Gant, was then an attendant, formally called a "unit treatment specialist," assigned by the hospital to Anicet's unit. His duties specifically included the treatment and, if possible, the control of patients like Anicet, of whose dangerous tendencies he was well aware. Indeed, the present incident began when, through a window of the day room, Gant saw Anicet throw a chair at a fellow patient. Gant went inside, tried to calm Anicet down, and warned him that if he did not do so, he would be confined to a "quiet room" in isolation. As Gant began to leave the day room, Anicet threw a heavy ashtray at his head and he was severely injured in twisting to avoid it.

In Gant's action for the resulting damages against Anicet, ¹ both sides moved for summary judgment on the issue of liability for the intentional torts of assault and battery. The trial judge denied the defendant's motion but granted Gant's. After the jury fixed the amount of damages, Anicet has taken this appeal from the final judgment. We reverse with directions to enter judgment for the appellant.

Few areas of the law of torts are so interesting, and therefore have proved so challenging, as the responsibility of insane persons for acts which would clearly be tortious if committed by the competent. See generally Ellis, Tort Responsibility of the Mentally Disabled, 4 Am.B.Found.Res.J. 1079 (1981); Siedelson, Reasonable Expectations and Subjects of Standards in Negligence Law: The Minor, the Mentally Impaired and the Mentally Incompetent, 50 Geo.Wash.L.Rev. 17 (1981). It has become well-settled in Florida and elsewhere that, as a rule, a lunatic is liable in the same generalized way as is an ordinary person for both "intentional" acts and "negligent" ones. Preferred Risk Mut. Ins. Co. v. Saboda, 489 So.2d 768 (Fla. 5th DCA) (negligent or intentional shooting death), review denied, 501 So.2d 1283 (Fla.1986); Kaczer v. Marrero, 324 So.2d 717 (Fla. 3d DCA 1976) (assault and battery); Jolley v. Powell, 299 So.2d 647 (Fla. 2d DCA 1974) (negligence), cert. denied, 309 So.2d 7 (Fla.1975); accord Seals v. Snow, 123 Kan. 88, 254 P. 348 (1927) (shooting death); Williams v. Kearbey, 13 Kan.App.2d 564, 775 P.2d 670 (1989) (battery); Weaver v. Ward, 80 Eng.Rep. 284 (1616); see W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Torts Sec. 135, at 1072 (5th ed. 1984). The expression "generalized way" and the quotation marks which surround the words "intentional" and "negligent," have been employed advisedly. This is because, as the authorities uniformly recognize, it is impossible to ascribe either the volition implicit in an intentional tort, the departure from the standard of a "reasonable" person which defines an act of ordinary negligence, or indeed any concept of "fault" at all to one who, like Anicet, is by definition unable to control his own actions through any exercise of reason. Preferred Risk, 489 So.2d at 771; Jolley, 299 So.2d at 648.

Instead, the conclusion that liability exists is founded squarely and acknowledgedly upon principles of good public policy which, it is held, are furthered by that conclusion. Almost invariably these considerations are stated to be:

(1) the notion that as between an innocent injured person and an incompetent injuring one, the latter should bear the loss ²; and

(2) the view that the imposition of liability would encourage the utmost restriction of the insane person so that he may cause no unnecessary damage to the innocent. ³ Jolley, 299 So.2d at 647.

Because the circumstances of this case totally negate both of these asserted reasons for the rule, we conclude that the rule should not apply. We may approach our reasons for this conclusion in terms respectively of each of the two actors in this real life parable.

1. Gant The basic idea underlying the view that insane persons should pay for their own intentional acts even though they can form no intention to commit them and thus could not be deemed "guilty" of wrong in the normal sense is the belief that justice demands that, as between two human beings of equal moral responsibility and ability to protect themselves from a wrong, the one who at least causes it--who might be called the active damagefeasor--should be responsible. Seals, 123 Kan. at 90, 254 P. at 349. Our leading case of Kaczer v. Marrero, 324 So.2d at 719, which upheld the right of an innocent workman to recover from an unconfined insane person who stabbed him, is based upon just this consideration. It obviously does not apply to this case because unlike Marrero, Gant was not an innocent member of the public unable to anticipate or safeguard himself against the intrusions of a lunatic. In all meaningful respects, his position was directly to the contrary: he was employed to encounter, and knowingly did encounter, just the dangers which injured him. Importantly, any economic loss caused by damage from one of those dangers is invariably borne, as it was in this case, by workers' compensation coverage. In these circumstances, we think that ordinary concerns of fundamental justice, far from indicating that Gant should be reimbursed for his loss by the tort system, require the opposite result.

In this respect, the familiar "fireman's rule" presents an apt analogy. Even putting aside the extensions of this rule which have found favor in Florida and other states, e.g., Kilpatrick v. Sklar, 548 So.2d 215 (Fla.1989); Rosa v. Dunkin' Donuts of Passaic, 122 N.J. 66, 583 A.2d 1129 (1991), its very core is that a person specifically hired to encounter and combat particular dangers is owed no independent tort duty by those who have created those dangers--even though, unlike the insane, the landowner or other defendant is actually guilty of negligence or of other fault in creating the dangers. Thus, as is said in the leading case of Krauth v. Geller, 31 N.J. 270, 157 A.2d 129 (1960):

Stated affirmatively, what is meant is that it is the fireman's business to deal with that very hazard and hence, perhaps by analogy to the contractor engaged as an expert to remedy dangerous situations, he cannot complain of negligence in the creation of the very occasion for his engagement. In terms of duty, it may be said there is none owed the fireman to exercise care so as not to require the special services for which he is trained and paid.

* * * * * *

[T]he fireman should receive appropriate compensation from the public he serves, both in pay which reflects the hazard and in workmen's compensation benefits for the consequences of the inherent risks of the calling.

Krauth, 31 N.J. at 273-74, 157 A.2d at 131 (emphasis supplied); accord Young v. Sherwin-Williams Co., Inc., 569 A.2d 1173 (D.C.App.1990); England v. Tasker, 129 N.H. 467, 529 A.2d 938 (1987); Maltman v. Sauer, 84 Wash.2d 975, 530 P.2d 254 (1975); Wright v. Coleman, 148 Wis.2d 897, 436 N.W.2d 864 (1989). The parallel, indeed the exact application of this doctrine to the present situation needs no further emphasis.

The same is true of the closely related doctrine that a landowner is not liable for negligently creating a condition to a contractor or other expert who was specifically hired to repair it. See Hickory House v. Brown, 77 So.2d 249 (Fla.1955); Bowen v. Willard, 321 So.2d 595 (Fla. 1st DCA 1975), quashed on other grounds, 340 So.2d 110 (Fla.1976); Chance v. Dallas County, 456 So.2d 295, 298 (Ala.1984); Aspelin v. Mounkes, 206 Kan. 132, 476 P.2d 620, 624 (1970); Palenscar v. Michael J. Bobb,...