Prindel v. Ravalli County

• Decision Date: 04 April 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04-640.,04-640.
• Citation: 331 Mont. 338,2006 MT 62,133 P.3d 165
• Parties: Robbie PRINDEL, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. RAVALLI COUNTY, Defendant and Respondent.
• Court: Montana Supreme Court

Page 165

133 P.3d 165

2006 MT 62

331 Mont. 338

Robbie PRINDEL, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. RAVALLI COUNTY, Defendant and Respondent.

No. 04-640.

Supreme Court of Montana.

Submitted on Briefs January 11, 2006.

Decided April 4, 2006.

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Rex Palmer, Attorneys, Inc., Missoula, for Appellant.

Dee Ann G. Cooney and Norman H. Grosfield, Utick & Grosfield, Helena, for Respondent.

LEAPHART, Justice.

¶ 1 Robbie Prindel (Prindel), who was stabbed by Richard Russell (Russell) on December 30, 1998, sued Ravalli County, alleging that the county was negligent when, on December 28, 1998, it failed to admit Russell to the Ravalli County Jail pursuant to a district court order. Both parties moved for summary judgment, and the District Court granted summary judgment in favor of Ravalli County, concluding that as a matter of law the County did not have a duty to prevent Russell from harming Prindel. The District Court declined to order release of various documents to Prindel and held that Prindel is not entitled to discovery of other documents. Prindel now appeals, and we reverse.

¶ 2 Prindel raises the following issues on appeal:

¶ 3 (1) whether the District Court erred when it held that Ravalli County owed no duty of care to Prindel;

¶ 4 (2) whether the District Court erred when it declined to order release of records pertaining to Russell compiled or possessed by the Missoula Pre-Release Center; and

¶ 5 (3) whether the District Court erred when it failed to compel production of the Ravalli County Attorney's files concerning Russell.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶ 6 On the evening of December 29, 1998, a group of revelers gathered at a private residence¹ in Hamilton, Montana, to celebrate the year's crepuscular remnants. Russell and Prindel both attended the soiree. The partygoers imbibed spirits well into the night. The party, not to be contained within a single day, spilled over into the early morning of December 30, 1998, whereupon violence tragically pierced the revelry. Russell stabbed Prindel in the heart with a six-inch knife, inflicting life-threatening injury and permanently impairing Prindel.

¶ 7 In connection with this stabbing, Russell was convicted of attempted deliberate homicide and sentenced to life in prison with an additional ten years for the use of a deadly weapon. Subsequently, Prindel filed a complaint against Ravalli County alleging that the county jail's failure to incarcerate Russell on December 28, 1998, despite a district court order that Russell begin serving a sentence on that date, amounted to negligence that proximately caused Prindel's injury.

¶ 8 During a hearing on December 23, 1998, Russell, who had previously received three suspended sentences and had been released subject to certain conditions, admitted to violating those conditions. Specifically, Russell admitted to consuming alcohol and engaging in disorderly conduct. The District Court for the Twenty-First Judicial District in Ravalli County revoked Russell's suspended sentences and ordered him to serve ten days in the Ravalli County Jail (the Jail). In a gesture of generosity befitting the spirit of the season and acceding to Russell's wish to spend Christmas unconfined, the District Court ordered him to report to the Jail "no later than 8:00 a.m. on [Monday,] December 28, 1998." When Russell showed up at the Jail, however, the jailers turned him away.

¶ 9 Russell reported to the Jail at 10:00 a.m. on December 28, 1998, to begin serving his sentence. He spoke with Heather Anderson (Anderson), who was on duty at the Jail, by telephone from the Jail lobby. Anderson could not find a written order of commitment from the court mandating the Jail to admit Russell. She informed Russell that he could not be booked until the Jail had the requisite paperwork and instructed him to return on January 2, 1999. Anderson did not place a call to the Ravalli County Clerk of Court (Clerk) to inquire whether there was an order mandating Russell's commitment. Nor does the evidence indicate that she requested that Russell go to the Clerk's office (located in the same building as the jail), procure the court's written order and return. Before informing Russell that he should return several days later, Anderson apparently spoke with Jason McCawley (McCawley), another staff member of the Jail, about a prior incident when Russell had attempted, unsuccessfully, to gain unauthorized entry to the Jail in order to harm an inmate. According to Anderson's deposition testimony, her knowledge of this previous incident played "[a] small part" in her decision to turn Russell away. According to McCawley, he was familiar with Russell, having seen Russell make threatening gestures to another inmate during one of his prior stints in the Jail.

¶ 10 Russell called the Jail again at 3:00 p.m. on December 28, 1998, seeking admission to serve his sentence. He was reminded that he should return to the Jail on January 2, 1999, to serve his sentence.

¶ 11 Anderson and McCawley both testified that it was not uncommon for a person to report to the Jail without the requisite paperwork and that, time permitting, the Jail would call the Clerk to confirm that the court had ordered such persons incarcerated. Moreover, Anderson testified that the Clerk could fax the order of commitment to the Jail within twenty or thirty minutes. McCawley testified that he called the Clerk after turning Russell away and that he could have called the Clerk before deciding not to admit Russell. David Anderson, the third person on duty at the Jail on December 28, testified that he would have sent a purported prisoner who was lacking commitment papers to "go get" the court order. He also indicated that he "probably would ... contact" the Clerk to verify that the court had ordered incarceration. Finally, both McCawley and Anderson testified that the Clerk's office called the Jail at some undetermined time on the afternoon of December 28, 1998, to confirm that the District Court had ordered Russell to serve time in the Jail.

¶ 12 No stranger to institutional living, Russell had an extensive criminal history. In 1981, Russell was sentenced to ten years in prison in connection with four felonies: two counts of theft; attempted escape; and bail jumping. In 1987, Russell pled guilty to burglary. By the mid-nineties, Russell had allegedly delved into the world of violent crime. He was arrested in 1995 and charged with felony aggravated assault and again arrested in 1996 and charged with domestic abuse.

¶ 13 In December 1997, Russell's proclivity for criminal behavior resurfaced, eventually culminating in his being sentenced to serve ten days in the Jail in December 1998. He was arrested and charged with two counts of felony assault, stemming from an incident when he allegedly fired a pistol into the air in a residential neighborhood while threatening to kill his neighbor and her barking dogs. Russell, who was allegedly intoxicated at the time, claimed that he had only fired a "cap gun," not a lethal pistol. Russell eventually pled guilty to two counts of misdemeanor assault in connection with this incident and was sentenced to concurrent sentences of 180 days in prison, with 150 days suspended. In November 1998, the State filed a petition for revocation of Russell's suspended sentence. The hearing of December 23, 1998, whence the District Court ordered Russell to serve ten days commencing on December 28, 1998, addressed this petition.

¶ 14 As alluded to above, Prindel filed suit against Ravalli County asserting a claim of negligence. Both parties moved for summary judgment. The County asserted that Prindel failed to establish that it had a duty to incarcerate Russell or prevent him from harming Prindel. The County also denied that its failure to imprison Russell caused Prindel's injuries. The County additionally asserted the defense of judicial immunity. Prindel retorted that the County waived the affirmative defenses of superseding intervening cause, public duty doctrine, and judicial immunity by its failure to plead them.

¶ 15 The District Court denied Prindel's motion for summary judgment and granted summary judgment in favor of Ravalli County. In its order, the District Court stated that a "duty to protect another from harm" may arise where there is a "special relationship [that] is `custodial by nature,' thus requiring the defendant to exercise reasonable control over his or her charge so as to prevent foreseeable harm to others." The court also acknowledged that in analyzing foreseeability in the duty context, the determinative question is whether the injured party was a foreseeable plaintiff. The court stressed that Russell was sentenced to prison in December 1998 because he had violated conditions of his suspended sentence for misdemeanor convictions. The court then detailed the process that generally occurs after it convicts a person on misdemeanor charges. The court order emphasizes that, consistent with local district court rules, the Clerk has two business days to file the minute entry with the jail ordering a person's incarceration. Here, the Clerk had until the end of December 28, 1998, to file the minute entry. The court suggests that "[d]ue to the absence of any documentation of Russell's sentence, due to the holiday in the midst of the two business days in which the minute entry was required to be prepared, due to the fact that the staff was shorthanded that Monday following the three-day weekend, and due to an unusually hectic day, Russell's date to begin his sentence was rescheduled by the jail staff" and that this rescheduling was an "understandable result of [these] circumstances . . . ."

¶ 16 The District Court determined that during the early morning hours of December 30, 1998, the County (by and through the Jail staff) did not have a special custodial relationship to Russell that would...