Connell v. Tooele City, 14995
| Decision Date | 25 November 1977 |
| Docket Number | No. 14995,14995 |
| Citation | 572 P.2d 697 |
| Parties | Mark E. CONNELL, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. TOOELE CITY, a Municipal Corporation, Louise Hardy, Clerk of the City Court ofTooele City, Tooele County, State of Utah, John Doe, Jane Doe, and BeckyPorter, Defendants and Respondents. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Brian M. Barnard, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and appellant.
Edward A. Watson, Tooele County Atty., Tooele, Scott J. Daniels of Snow, Christensen & Martineau, Salt Lake City, for defendants and respondents.
Plaintiff appeals from an order of the District Court for Tooele County denying his motion for partial summary judgment on the issue of liability and dismissing his complaint. All statutory references are to Utah Code Ann., 1953.
Plaintiff alleges in his complaint and his affidavit filed under the provisions of Rule 56, U.R.C.P., that he was issued a citation for speeding, which was entered on the docket books of Tooele City Court in two different places and given two separate case numbers. Subsequently, plaintiff was found guilty of the offense and fined $15, which plaintiff paid. The conviction was entered under both case numbers on the docket books but payment of the fine was entered in one case only. A bench warrant was issued in the second case, and plaintiff was arrested. When plaintiff produced his receipt for payment of the fine, Defendant Louise Hardy, Clerk of the Court, acknowledged the duplication and said that she would take care of the matter. The bench warrant was not recalled, however, and the plaintiff was again arrested, booked, jailed, and released only upon posting bail in the amount of $20 (which was later refunded to him). Plaintiff then brought this action for damages, alleging negligence on the part of the Clerk of the Tooele City Court and her deputy.
Plaintiff moved for summary judgment on the issue of liability, reserving the amount of damages for trial. Defendant Tooele City moved to dismiss the complaint against it on the ground that the governmental entity was immune from suit under the provisions of the Utah Governmental Immunity Act, Sections 63-30-3 and 63-30-10(2). Defendants Louise Hardy and Becky Porter moved to dismiss the complaint against them on the ground that plaintiff's claim against them was barred by the common law doctrine of immunity of judicial and quasi-judicial officers.
The District Court denied plaintiff's motion without prejudice, granted the motion of Tooele City, and granted the motion of Defendants Louise Hardy and Becky Porter, giving plaintiff ten days in which to amend his complaint with respect to these two individual defendants. Plaintiff did not amend.
Defendants argue that plaintiff's injury arises out of false arrest and therefore the action against the governmental entity, Tooele City, is barred by the provisions of Section 63-30-10(2). 1 In support of this argument, defendants cite Duenges v. United States, 114 F.Supp. 751 (S.D.N.Y.1953) in which the Court interpreted a provision of the Federal Torts Claims Act which contains an exception to the waiver of immunity similar to the Utah provision cited. 2 In Duenges, a soldier had been honorably discharged, but was arrested for desertion. Duenges brought action based on the negligence of a government employee who improperly failed to record the discharge in Duenges' service records. The Court, however, held that the very "gist and essence" of Duenges' cause of action was false arrest and denied his claim.
Though the result in Duenges has been criticized by Dean Prosser, 3 we believe our legislature intended to retain the immunity of the governmental entity in just such a case as this one. Although plaintiff's complaint alleges negligence of the clerk in keeping her books, we are of the opinion that all of the injuries claimed by plaintiff arise out of one of the excepted torts set forth in Section 63-30-10(2).
Plaintiff argues that the individual defendants are not protected by judicial or quasi-judicial immunity, since the negligence alleged consisted of the clerk's improper docketing of the court records, which is a ministerial duty, and not a discretionary one.
Dean Prosser defines the distinction between discretionary and ministerial duties, as enunciated by the courts, as follows:
. . . acts which are regarded as 'discretionary' or 'quasi-judicial' in character, requiring personal deliberation, decision and judgment, and those which are merely 'ministerial,' amounting only to an obedience to order, or the performance of a duty in which the officer is left no choice of his own. 4
The reason for the distinction between discretionary and ministerial duties has been enunciated by several authorities 5 and we believe this distinction to be necessary and sound. For if every employee or officer of the government were to be held liable, individually, for errors in judgment or exercise of the discretion, which his employment requires him to make, such employee would fear to make decisions and the administration of government could be seriously jeopardized. On the other hand, if the employee's duties require no exercise of judgment or discretion, the reason for protecting his actions does not exist.
A clerk's duty of entering a citation in the docket book and assigning a case number is uniformly held to be a ministerial duty, rather than a discretionary one. 6 The great majority of jurisdictions affords no immunity to clerks who are negligent in such duties, and whose negligence is the cause of injury to a plaintiff. 7
Many of our decisions reflect that this Court has recognized the distinction between discretionary and...
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Ford v. Kenosha County
...only be noted that various other state court cases have employed the same analysis in factually similar cases. See e.g., Connell v. Tooele City, 572 P.2d 697 (Utah 1977); Mauro v. Kittitas County, 26 Wash.App. 538, 613 P.2d 195 (1980); cf. Mills v. Ganucheau, 416 So.2d 361 As stated above, ......
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Ross v. Schackel
...tax assessment a quasi judicial act). An example of a ministerial duty for which there is no immunity occurred in Connell v. Tooele City, 572 P.2d 697, 699 (Utah 1977), where a court clerk was held to be liable for failing to properly docket the payment of a fine, resulting in the issuance ......
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Lyon v. Burton
...be liable even if the agency itself was engaged in a governmental function and was immune from suit. For example, in Connell v. Tooele City, 572 P.2d 697 (Utah 1977), a court clerk was held liable for failing to docket the payment of a fine, a ministerial duty, even though the court itself ......
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Taylor on Behalf of Taylor v. Ogden City School Dist.
...v. Borthick, 791 P.2d 504, 505 (Utah 1989); Gillman v. Department of Fin. Insts., 782 P.2d 506, 510-12 (Utah 1989); Connell v. Tooele City, 572 P.2d 697, 698-99 (Utah 1977); Epting v. State, 546 P.2d 242, 244 (Utah 1976)). What the Ledfors court failed to note, however, was that Ledfors was......