Bauer v. State
| Citation | 511 N.W.2d 447 |
| Decision Date | 04 February 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. C8-91-2302,C8-91-2302 |
| Parties | 9 Indiv.Empl.Rts.Cas. (BNA) 335 Sharon Y. BAUER, Respondent, v. STATE of Minnesota, et al., Appellants, and Roger VanBuren, et al., Petitioners, Appellants. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Minnesota (US) |
Syllabus by the Court
Official immunity does not apply to defamation. Whether there is an issue on actual malice to defeat a qualified privilege for allegedly defamatory statements is to be determined on remand.
Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., Sharon A. Lewis, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Paul, for appellants.
Gregg M. Corwin, Mary L. Setter, Gregg M. Corwin & Associates, St. Louis Park, for respondent.
Heard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.
In this case, we conclude that official immunity does not apply to a defamation action against public officials. We reverse and remand to the trial court.
Some facts and procedural background are necessary to put the issue on appeal in its proper setting. Plaintiff-respondent Sharon Y. Bauer was employed by the State of Minnesota at its Faribault Regional Treatment Center. She held the position of program plan coordinator for developmentally-disabled clients in the building where defendant-appellant Roger VanBuren was group supervisor and defendant-appellant Jane Richert was assistant group supervisor.
About September 1987, plaintiff began complaining to her supervisors that her clients were not getting proper treatment, and from there matters deteriorated. Investigations were conducted. Memos and notes were made and kept by defendants. Three times plaintiff was suspended for insubordination, and twice, in arbitration proceedings, an arbitrator set aside the suspensions. Finally, in July 1991, after plaintiff failed to return to work from a medical leave of absence, her employment was terminated.
Plaintiff commenced suit in 1990 and amended her complaint in 1991. Her claims for sex discrimination, unfair labor practice, and constitutional violations against the defendant State of Minnesota were dismissed, but her "whistleblower" claim against the State remains for trial. Of immediate concern in this appeal is the defamation claim against defendants VanBuren and Richert personally.
The trial court denied defendants' summary judgment motion to dismiss the defamation claim against them. The judge concluded that "absolute privilege" did not apply, citing Rico v. State of Minnesota, 472 N.W.2d 100 (Minn.1991). The court then stated that "the defendants have asserted the claim of qualified privilege, which can be defeated by a showing of malice"; and, said the court, malice was a fact question for trial.
The court of appeals deemed the denial of defendants' claim of official immunity appealable and, in an unpublished opinion, affirmed the trial court. The court of appeals ruled that malice was a fact issue. The court quoted Rico, where we said that malice is present "when an official intentionally commits an act that he or she then has reason to believe is prohibited," 472 N.W.2d at 107; and that maliciousness depends on the "legal reasonableness of the official's actions." Id. at 108.
We granted defendants' petition for further review. Defendants frame the issue as whether Rico entitles them "to a court determination of whether they intentionally committed a known wrong * * * before being forced to trial on the claims asserted against them." Plaintiff-respondent, on the other hand, states the issue in her brief as "[w]hether VanBuren and Richert qualify for official immunity from suit for the common law defamation claim * * *."
Official immunity is a long-established common law doctrine. For example, in a 1925 case, Stevens v. North States Motor, Inc., 161 Minn. 345, 201 N.W. 435 (1925), this court held that county commissioners sued for negligent construction of a road were immune from suit, absent a willful wrong. More recently, in Elwood v. County of Rice, 423 N.W.2d 671 (Minn.1988), we applied official immunity to immunize deputy sheriffs from liability for an illegal entry of a home. And most recently, in Pletan v. Gaines, 494 N.W.2d 38 (Minn.1992), we held that police officers who engaged in a dangerous high-speed car chase of a fleeing suspect were immune from suit under the doctrine. Official immunity, we said in Pletan, applies to public officials who must exercise judgment and discretion at the operational level, as contrasted with statutory discretionary function immunity which applies to governmental units and their employees at the policymaking level of government. Id. at 40.
Significantly, it does not appear that official immunity has ever been applied to public officials charged with common law defamation. Defendant-appellants rely on Rico v. State, 472 N.W.2d 100 (Minn.1991), but in that case official immunity was applied to a retaliatory discharge claim. Defamation was not involved.
A decision to discharge an employee may well involve official immunity, as it did in Rico, because the decision involves judgment and discretion at the operational level of government. But official immunity does not fit defamation. In defamation, the essential focus is not so much on alternative courses of conduct and the reasonableness of the actor's conduct, as it is in most torts, but on the nature of the published statement. "One who publishes a defamatory statement of fact is not subject to liability for defamation if the statement is true." Restatement (Second) of Torts Sec. 581A (1977). Truth is sometimes said to be relative but it is hardly discretionary. A true statement does not depend on the judgment of the speaker, but on its accordance with the facts; either the statement is true or it is not, and there is no discretionary conduct for official immunity to cover and protect. Whether the defendant knew or should have known his statements were false may involve an exercise of discretion and judgment, but this goes to the separate issues of qualified privilege and malice, not to whether there has been a defamatory false statement.
Defamation, which is another name for libel and slander, is an intricate tort with its own set of special rules. The statement must be defamatory. It must be false. And it must be published. Even then, assuming no constitutional or other problems, the statement is qualifiedly privileged if made upon a proper occasion, from a proper motive, and based upon reasonable or probable cause. Stuempges v. Parke, Davis & Co., 297 N.W.2d 252, 256-57 (Minn.1980); see also Wirig v. Kinney Shoe Corp., 461 N.W.2d 374, 380-81 (Minn.1990). To defeat this qualified privilege, the plaintiff must prove actual malice. Actual malice means what it says: ill-will and improper motive or wishing wantonly and without cause to injure the plaintiff. Id. at 257; McKenzie v. William J. Burns Int'l Detective Agency, Inc., 149 Minn. 311, 312, 183 N.W. 516, 517 (1921). The Rico malice standard, on the other hand, is a different standard. See Rico, 472 N.W.2d at 107 n. 5 (). Because official immunity applies to discretionary conduct, the test for a malicious wrong is the "legal reasonableness of the official's actions." Rico at 108. 1 To engraft this inapposite standard on common law defamation would only complicate and confuse an already complicated cause of action.
In Johnson v. Dirkswager, 315 N.W.2d 215 (Minn.1982), the Commissioner of Welfare was sued for defamation by a state hospital superintendent whose...
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