Benally v. Robinson, 9677
| Decision Date | 20 November 1962 |
| Docket Number | No. 9677,9677 |
| Citation | 376 P.2d 388,14 Utah 2d 6 |
| Parties | d 6 Alice BENALLY and Perlinda Benally, by her guardian an litem, Alice R. Benally, Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. L. G. ROBINSON, Clifford G. Edmunds and Louis W. Duncan, Defendants and Respondents. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Glen C. Hanni, Salt Lake City, for appellants.
Mark, Johnson, Schoenhals & Roberts, Jed Shields, Homer Holmgren, City Atty., Jack L. Crellin, Asst. City Atty., Salt Lake City, for respondents.
Plaintiffs appeal from a summary judgment in favor of the defendants Edmunds and Duncan; and from a jury verdict and judgment in favor of defendant Robinson.
Plaintiffs are the wife and daughter of Thomas Dee Benally deceased; the defendants are Salt Lake City Police officers. The action is for the wrongful death of Benally, which resulted from a fall down a flight of stairs in the city jail.
On November 26, 1960, Officer Robinson was patrolling downtown Salt Lake City in the police 'paddy wagon.' He first observed Benally, a Navajo Indian, on the street about 6:30 p. m. Later in the evening he again saw Benally with blood on his face his coat on upside down, and apparently in a drunken condition so he placed him under arrest. The officer took him in the paddy wagon to the city jail where he helped him out of the car because he felt it unsafe for a man in Benally's condition to get out by himself.
Benally was unruly and Robinson had some difficulty controlling him. At one point on the way into the jail Benally lurched backward knocking Robinson down and falling on top of him. Robinson took Benally to the booking room, where he searched him. The prisoner was, to put it mildly, uncooperative. When Robinson attempted to remove something from his watch pocket he dropped to the floor and grasped Robinson's legs. The latter straddled him and in spite of the prisoner's resistance removed a $10.00 bill from the pocket. In this struggle Benally somehow got loose and went backward several steps, hit against a wire mesh door which is supposed to guard an open stairway, but which was hooked open at the time. This seemed to have pitched Benally sideways and he fell head over heels down the stairs, landing on his back on the cement floor. Robinson and another officer carried him up the stairs and put him in a cell where he remained until the next afternoon when he was taken to the county hospital. He died three days later from the injuries to his head received in the fall.
Officers Edmunds and Duncan were joined as defendants because they were on duty at the jail. The claim against them is that they were negligent in not keeping the wire door at the top of the stairs closed. We are not persuaded that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment in their favor on the ground that no basis for imposing liability on them was established. Perhaps it is conceivable that under some circumstances they could be held responsible to a person who was injured because the door to the stairway was not closed. But no such situation was made evident here. At the time of this incident they were behind a counter which separated them from the area where Robinson and Benally were. Neither because of the nature of the duties they were performing, nor because of their proximity to the stairway, does it appear that any lack of reasonable care on their part proximately caused the injury to Benally under the particular circumstances shown here. Officer Robinson had him in custody, and more important, he had his hands on him exercising immediate physical control over him. We appraise the situation as in accord with the ruling of the trial court that it was not unreasonable for them to assume that he would continue to do so; and that they were not obliged to foresee that Benally would escape from Robinson's control, get around a corner and fall down this stairway. 1
The principal point urged on appeal against defendant...
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