Ezell v. Cockrell

• Citation: 902 S.W.2d 394
• Parties: Kimberly S. EZELL, Individually, and as surviving spouse of the deceased, Tarrence Ray Ezell, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. Joseph COCKRELL, Administrator, ad Litem of the Estate of James Gregory Hillis, Donna League Garrison Blankenship, William A. Adams, individually and in his official capacity as a police officer employed by the City of Elkton, Tennessee, City of Elkton, Giles County, Tennessee, John Wayne Tillery and wife, Sandy Tillery, d/b/a Boondocks' Saloon, and Ricky Joe Brooks, d/b/a Boondocks' Saloon, and John Doe, Defendants/Appellees.
• Decision Date: 05 June 1995
• Court: Supreme Court of Tennessee

Page 394

902 S.W.2d 394

Kimberly S. EZELL, Individually, and as surviving spouse of

the deceased, Tarrence Ray Ezell, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. Joseph COCKRELL, Administrator, ad Litem of the Estate of

James Gregory Hillis, Donna League Garrison Blankenship,

William A. Adams, individually and in his official capacity

as a police officer employed by the City of Elkton,

Tennessee, City of Elkton, Giles County, Tennessee, John

Wayne Tillery and wife, Sandy Tillery, d/b/a Boondocks'

Saloon, and Ricky Joe Brooks, d/b/a Boondocks' Saloon, and

John Doe, Defendants/Appellees.

Supreme Court of Tennessee,

at Nashville.

June 5, 1995.

Ben Boston, Christopher V. Sockwell, Boston, Bates & Holt, Lawrenceburg, for appellant.

Overton Thompson, III, Stephen H. Price, Farris, Warfield & Kanaday, Nashville, for appellees.

David L. Raybin, Hollins, Wagster & Yarbrough, P.C., Nashville, for amicus curiae, Fraternal Order of Police.

Robert H. Watson, John C. Duffy, Watson, Hollow & Reeves, Knoxville, for amicus curiae, Tenn. Municipal League.

Phillip A. Noblett, William Shelley Parker, Jr., Chattanooga, for amicus curiae, City of Chattanooga, Tenn.

J. Anthony Farmer, Lynn Bergwerk, Farmer & Bergwerk, Knoxville, for amicus curiae, Tenn. Trial Lawyers Ass'n.

OPINION

ANDERSON, Chief Justice.

The issue presented in this appeal is whether a police officer owes a duty of care to a third party injured by a drunk driver whom the police officer has failed to arrest.

Relying upon the public duty doctrine which shields public employees from such actions, the trial court dismissed the action for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, and the Court of Appeals--in a split decision--affirmed the dismissal. We granted the plaintiff's application for permission to appeal, and now affirm the Court of Appeals' judgment, because we conclude that the public duty doctrine was not abolished by the Tennessee Governmental Tort Liability Act, and that sound policy reasons warrant its continuance.

BACKGROUND

Because the plaintiff's action against the defendants was dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, we are required to take the facts as stated in the complaint to be true. ¹ They are as follows:

On March 1, 1991, James Hillis and Donna Blankenship were drinking at the Boondocks' Saloon in the City of Elkton in Giles County, Tennessee. At approximately 8:45 p.m., Blankenship left the bar and entered her automobile in the parking lot of the Boondocks' Saloon. She was approached by Chief William Adams of the Elkton Police Department, who asked her to step out of the car. When Blankenship stepped out of the car, Chief Adams concluded that she was too intoxicated to drive. At that point, Hillis came out of the bar and volunteered to drive Blankenship home in her car. According to the plaintiff's complaint, Chief Adams allowed Hillis to drive away in the car when he knew, or should have known, that Hillis was also intoxicated.

Approximately one hour later, Hillis, while driving Blankenship's black Chevrolet Cavalier on the wrong side of the road with the headlights off, collided head-on with a pick-up truck on U.S. Highway 31. As a result of the collision, one passenger in the truck, the plaintiff, Kimberly Ezell, was seriously injured, and another passenger, her husband, Tarrence Ezell, was killed. Hillis was also killed in the collision.

Thereafter, Kimberly Ezell, sued the City of Elkton, Chief Adams, and others on various theories of negligence. One theory the complaint alleged was that Chief Adams was negligent because he allowed Hillis to drive an automobile when he knew, or should have known, that Hillis was intoxicated. Specifically the complaint alleged that Chief Adams breached a duty owed to the plaintiff when he failed to arrest Hillis and Blankenship for driving under the influence or for public intoxication, and as a consequence of that breach, the plaintiff was injured and her husband killed. The complaint also alleged that Chief Adams's actions "were in violation of the rights of the decedent, Tarrence Ray Ezell, under the laws of the Constitution of the United States and particularly the Fourteenth Amendment thereof and 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983."

The City of Elkton and Chief Adams moved to dismiss, asserting that the plaintiff had failed to state a cause of action for negligence because a police officer's duty to arrest or detain drunk drivers is to the public generally and not to individual members of the public. The defendants also sought dismissal of the Section 1983 claim, contending that simple negligence resulting in an unintended deprivation of a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment is not actionable under 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983.

The trial court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss, and in a 2 to 1 decision, the Court of Appeals affirmed, concluding that the public duty doctrine was not abrogated by passage of the Governmental Tort Liability Act, and determining that no "special-duty" of care was owed in this case. We granted the plaintiff's application for permission to appeal, and for the reasons articulated below, now affirm the Court of Appeals' judgment.

PUBLIC DUTY DOCTRINE

The public duty doctrine originated at common-law and shields a public employee from suits for injuries that are caused by the public employee's breach of a duty owed to the public at large. Kelly M. Tullier, Governmental Liability for Negligent Failure to Detain Drunk Drivers, 77 Cornell L.Rev. 873, 886 (1992). The doctrine can be traced to the United States Supreme Court's decision in South v. Maryland, 59 U.S. (18 How.) 396, 15 L.Ed. 433 (1855), which held that a sheriff is not liable for failing to protect a kidnap victim because the sheriff's duty to keep the peace was "a public duty, for neglect of which he is amenable to the public, and punishable by indictment only." Id. at 403.

Thereafter, the public duty doctrine was widely accepted by most state courts, ² including Tennessee, where one of the earliest applications of the doctrine occurred in Irvine v. Chattanooga, 101 Tenn. 291, 47 S.W. 419 (1898). There, this Court held that a city is not liable to a citizen whose home is destroyed by fire through the negligence or inefficiency of the city's fire department because the duty to extinguish fires is a public one, not owed to any individual in particular. See also State to use of Cardin v. McClellan, 113 Tenn. 616, 625, 85 S.W. 267, 269 (1905); Cary v. Brown, 3 Tenn.Civ.App. (Higgins) 399, 401-02 (1912).

The most recent statement of the public duty doctrine by this Court was in Bennett v. Stutts, 521 S.W.2d 575, 576 (Tenn.1975), where we wrote:

It is the settled law in this state that private citizens, as such, cannot maintain an action complaining of the wrongful acts of public officials unless such private citizens aver special interest or a special injury not common to the public generally. (Citations omitted.)

As we have often recognized, the imposition of a duty in any negligence action reflects society's contemporary policies and social requirements concerning the right of individuals and the general public to be protected from another's act or conduct. Bradshaw v. Daniel, 854 S.W.2d 865, 870 (Tenn.1993).

A number of public policy considerations have been advanced to explain and support adoption of the public duty doctrine. See generally, Note, Police Liability for Negligent Failure to Prevent Crime, 94 Harv.L.Rev. 821, 832-35 (1981). One policy consideration frequently expressed is that individuals, juries and courts are ill-equipped to judge governmental decisions as to how particular community resources should be or should have been allocated to protect individual members of the public. See, e.g., Morgan v. District of Columbia, 468 A.2d 1306, 1311 (D.C.App.1983). Some courts have theorized that severe depletion of those resources could well result if every oversight or omission of a police official resulted in civil liability. Id. They have also observed that such a rule would place police officials in the untenable position of insuring the personal safety of every member of the public, or facing a civil suit for damages, and that the public duty doctrine eliminates that dilemma. See Landis v. Rockdale County, 212 Ga.App. 700, 445 S.E.2d 264, 268 (1994) (where the Georgia Court of Appeals applied the public duty doctrine and stated that "[a] policeman's lot is not so unhappy that he must choose between being charged with dereliction of duty if he does not arrest when he has probable cause or being mulcted in damages if he does.").

Another policy consideration justifying recognition of the public duty doctrine is that police officials often act and react in the milieu of criminal activity where every decision is fraught with uncertainty. Morgan v. District of Columbia, 468 A.2d at 1311. Illustrative of that approach was the Connecticut Supreme Court's endorsement of the public duty doctrine in a failure-to-arrest case:

[t]he adoption of a rule of liability where some kind of harm may happen to someone would cramp the exercise of official discretion beyond the limits desirable in our society. Should the officer try to avoid liability by removing from the road all persons who pose any potential hazard, he may find himself liable in many instances for false arrest. We do not think that the public interest is served by allowing a jury of laymen with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight to second-guess the exercise of a policeman's discretionary professional duty. Such discretion is no discretion at all.

Shore v. Town of Stonington, 187 Conn. 147, 444 A.2d 1379, 1384 (1982).

Finally, many courts subscribing to the public duty doctrine have emphasized that mechanisms, other than civil negligence actions, exist wherein individual officials may be held accountable for dereliction of duty, for instance, internal disciplinary proceedings or formal criminal prosecutions. Morgan...