Morales v. The City Of Okla. City

• Decision Date: 09 February 2010
• Docket Number: 552.,No. 105,105
• Citation: 230 P.3d 869,2010 OK 9
• Parties: Cruz MORALES, as Mother and Next Friend of Alma Morales, a Minor, Plaintiff/Appellant,v.The CITY OF OKLAHOMA CITY, a Political Subdivision of the State of Oklahoma, ex rel. the OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, a Department of the City of Oklahoma City, Defendant/Appellee.
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

230 P.3d 869

2010 OK 9

Cruz MORALES, as Mother and Next Friend of Alma Morales, a Minor, Plaintiff/Appellant,v.The CITY OF OKLAHOMA CITY, a Political Subdivision of the State of Oklahoma, ex rel. the OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT, a Department of the City of Oklahoma City, Defendant/Appellee.

No. 105,552.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Feb. 9, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

ON APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT IN OKLAHOMA COUNTY

¶ 0 Plaintiff brought this action against the City of Oklahoma City to recover damages for injuries allegedly sustained by her minor daughter during an arrest by an Oklahoma City police officer. The District Court in Oklahoma County, Patricia G. Parrish, trial judge, gave summary judgment to City based on the exemption from the general rule of legislatively mandated governmental tort accountability provided by § 155(4) of the Governmental Tort Claims Act. ¹ Plaintiff's appeal stands retained for this court's disposition.

THE TRIAL COURT'S JUDGMENT IS REVERSED AND THE CAUSE IS REMANDED FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS TO BE CONSISTENT WITH TODAY'S PRONOUNCEMENT.

Travis W. Watkins, Mulinix Ogden Hall Andrews & Ludlam, PLLC, Oklahoma City, OK, for Plaintiff/Appellant.

Kenneth Jordan, Municipal Counselor, Richard C. Smith, Litigation Division Head, and Paula A. Kelly, Assistant Municipal Counselor, Oklahoma City, OK, Attorneys for Defendant/Appellee.²

OPALA, J.

¶ 1 The dispositive issue tendered on appeal is whether the trial court erred in giving summary judgment to City. We answer in the affirmative.

ITHE ANATOMY OF LITIGATION

¶ 2 On 21 September 2005, Oklahoma City police officer Mitchell McCoy was on duty at Roosevelt Middle School when a fight broke out in the school's cafeteria between twelve-year-old Alma Morales (“Alma”) and another female student. Officer McCoy stepped in to assist two teachers in breaking up the fight. After removing Alma from the proximity of the other student and restraining her, Officer McCoy placed her under arrest. At some point during the incident, Alma's left wrist was broken and her left elbow injured.

¶ 3 Plaintiff, Alma's mother, presented a written notice of claim for Alma's injuries to the City of Oklahoma City relying on the Governmental Tort Claims Act (“GTCA”).³ Because the claim was not approved within ninety days after it was filed, it was deemed denied under the terms of § 157(A) of the GTCA.⁴ Plaintiff then brought in the District Court in Oklahoma County a personal injury action against City on Alma's behalf.

¶ 4 In her initial petition plaintiff alleged that Officer McCoy, acting within the scope of his employment, used excessive force, acted negligently, intentionally, maliciously, and in reckless disregard of her daughter's safety. City responded with a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the allegations of intentional, malicious, and reckless conduct on their face took Officer McCoy's conduct outside the scope of his employment, thereby relieving City of any liability for his actions.⁵ Plaintiff then amended her petition, removing all descriptive allegations of Officer McCoy's conduct and replacing them with a non-specific allegation of tort-inflicted damage to Alma caused by Officer McCoy's actions taken within the scope of his employment. City admits that Officer McCoy was acting within the scope of his employment during the incident, but denies both that his conduct was tortious and that his actions caused Alma's injuries.

¶ 5 City moved for summary judgment, arguing that (1) the undisputed material facts of record support no other conclusion than that Officer McCoy's use of force to restrain and arrest Alma was objectively reasonable and hence statutorily privileged; and (2) even if Officer McCoy's conduct caused Alma delictual harm, City is immune from liability for his conduct under three of the statutory exemptions from governmental tort accountability created by the GTCA.⁶ The trial court agreed that City was immune from liability under one of the three exemptions, 51 O.S. Supp.2004 § 155(4), ⁷ and gave judgment to City. Plaintiff appealed. Upon City's motion, the appeal was retained by this court. We now reverse the judgment and remand the cause for further proceedings to be consistent with this opinion.

IISTANDARD OF REVIEW

¶ 6 Summary process-a special pretrial procedural track pursued with the aid of acceptable probative substitutes ⁸-is a search for undisputed material facts which, without resort to forensic combat, may be utilized in the judicial decision-making process.⁹ The moving party stands entitled to judgment as a matter of law when neither genuine issues of material fact nor conflicting inferences that may be drawn from uncontested facts are in dispute and the law favors the moving party's claim or liability-defeating defense.¹⁰ Only those evidentiary materials which eliminate from trial some or all fact issues on the merits of the claim or of the defense afford legitimate support for a trial court's use of summary process for a claim's adjudication.¹¹

¶ 7 The purpose of summary process is not to deprive parties of their right to have the disputed facts of the case tried by a jury, but rather to decide the legal sufficiency of the evidentiary materials presented to determine whether a triable case is tendered.¹² The use of summary process may not be extended to swallow triable issues of fact. ¹³ Inclusion of the latter within that process would violate a party's fundamental right either to a trial by jury at common law or due process by orderly trial before a court in equity.¹⁴ The scalpel of summary judgment may be wielded to terminate litigation only when, as a matter of law, no material facts offered by the parties are in discord.

¶ 8 Issues in summary process stand before us for de novo review.¹⁵ All facts and inferences in a summary proceeding must be viewed in the light most favorable to the non-movant.¹⁶ Just as trial courts must decide in the first instance whether summary judgment is proper, so too must appellate courts undertake an independent and non-deferential de novo review when testing the legal sufficiency of all evidentiary materials proffered by the parties in their quest for or in their defense against summary relief.¹⁷ If no material fact or inference derived from the evidentiary materials stands in dispute and if the law favors the moving party's claim or liability-defeating defense, summary judgment is the latter party's due.

¶ 9 Although the trial court gave City summary judgment solely because of the exemption from liability provided to governmental employers by the provisions of 51 O.S. Supp.2004 § 155(4), City is now free to defend its judgment on any ground pressed below but left unresolved by the trial tribunal. When a trial court reaches the correct result for the wrong reason, its judgment is not subject to reversal.¹⁸

IIISUMMARY RELIEF IS NOT CITY'S DUE BASED ON ITS STATUTORY EXEMPTION DEFENSES

¶ 10 Relying on three exemptions from the general rule of governmental tort accountability provided by the GTCA, City argues it cannot be held liable for Officer McCoy's actions even if they could be considered negligent. The trial court gave judgment to City on the basis of the exemption provided by § 155(4) of the GTCA, the pertinent portion of which shields a municipality from liability if a loss or claim arises from the enforcement of a law.¹⁹ City urges this court to affirm the judgment on that basis or, alternatively, on the basis of either or both of the other two GTCA provisions City urged below but which were left unaddressed and uninvoked by the trial court's decision.²⁰ We conclude in this case that none of the three provisions cited may shield City from liability.

A. The Exemption from Liability Provided by GTCA § 155(4).

¶ 11 The provisions of § 155(4) of the GTCA state that a political subdivision shall not be liable for a loss or claim that results from:

4. Adoption or enforcement of or failure to adopt or enforce a law, whether valid or invalid, including, but not limited to, any statute, charter provision, ordinance, resolution, rule, regulation or written policy; ...

City argues that even if Officer McCoy was negligent and injured Alma, it [City] cannot be held liable because the injuries occurred while Officer McCoy was enforcing a law. In essence, City poses for our adoption a construction of § 155(4) that would provide a blanket immunity to a municipality for claims arising from law enforcement. We recently rejected just such an argument by City in Tuffy's Inc. v. City of Oklahoma City,²¹ in which we said,

“To construe § 155(4) as providing blanket immunity to political subdivisions for any claim arising from law enforcement would not conform to established precedent. We have consistently held that a municipality is liable for the tortious acts of police officers committed within the scope of employment as defined by the GTCA.” ²²

¶ 12 The purpose of § 155(4) is to protect the discretionary acts of law enforcement officers in deciding whether a given situation calls for enforcing a law or not. That choice, whichever way it goes, may result in a detriment visited upon either the person with whom the officer is engaged or upon a third person.²³ It is the exercise of that discretion which is protected by this exemption. Once an officer makes the decision to enforce a law by making an arrest, he or she must do so in a lawful manner. If a tort is committed in the process of making an arrest, § 155(4) does not provide immunity from suit to the officer's governmental employer for the resulting damages.

¶ 13 Whether a governmental agency is ultimately liable depends, of course, on whether its police officer employee committed the tort of which he or she is accused. Unless the infliction of delictual harm is determinable as a matter of law, governmental liability or exoneration for loss caused by the manner of effecting arrest must await a jury's resolution. In short, we...