Scott v. Universal Sales, Inc.

• Decision Date: 05 August 2015
• Docket Number: No. 20130257.,20130257.
• Citation: 2015 UT 64,356 P.3d 1172
• Court: Utah Supreme Court
• Parties: Mika SCOTT, Appellant, v. UNIVERSAL SALES, INC., and John Does 1–10, Appellees.

356 P.3d 1172

2015 UT 64

Mika SCOTT, Appellant

v.UNIVERSAL SALES, INC., and John Does 1–10, Appellees.

No. 20130257.

Supreme Court of Utah.

Aug. 5, 2015.

Charles H. Thronson, Nicole G. Farrell, Scott S. Bell, Michael K. McKell, Joseph M. Stultz, Michael A. Worel, John W. Christiansen, and Alan S. Mouritsen, Salt Lake City, for appellant.

Peter Stirba, Salt Lake City, for appellees Utah County and Utah County Sheriff's Office.

Peter W. Summerill and Tera J. Peterson, Salt Lake City, for amicus Utah Association for Justice.

Jason B. Richards, Ogden, for amicus Utah Sherriff's Association.

Chief Justice DURRANT authored the opinion of the Court, in which Associate Chief Justice LEE, Justice DURHAM, Justice PARRISH, and Judge ROTH joined. Justice NEHRING did not participate herein due to his retirement; Court of Appeals Judge STEPHEN L. ROTH sat. Justice HIMONAS became a member of the Court on February, 13, 2015, after oral argument in this matter, and accordingly did not participate.

Chief Justice DURRANT, opinion of the Court:

Introduction

¶ 1 This case requires us to consider the conditions under which the custodian of a dangerous person has a duty to prevent that person from injuring others. In prior cases, we have concluded that such a duty exists only if the custodian is aware, or should be aware, that the person poses a threat to a specific individual or a discrete group of individuals. In contrast, the Second Restatement of Torts does not require notice of the same particularized danger, and the Plaintiff in this case urges us to overrule our prior caselaw in favor of the Restatement's approach. For three reasons, we accept that invitation and adopt the standard articulated in the Restatement. First, our caselaw in this area is based on incorrect assumptions about the practical consequences of imposing such a duty. Second, Utah law is out of step with the rule employed in the overwhelming majority of other jurisdictions. And third, the old rule is inconsistent with the analytical framework we have employed in our most recent cases analyzing whether a defendant owes a duty of care.

¶ 2 We must also determine whether the Governmental Immunity Act as applied in this case violates article I, section 11 of the Utah Constitution (the open courts clause). We have read the open courts clause to prohibit the legislature from eliminating a cause of action unless it provides an alternative remedy that meets certain criteria. As we explain in more detail below, the Governmental Immunity Act grants governmental entities blanket immunity from any liability that arises from the exercise of a “governmental function.” The legislature recently expanded the definition of that term to encompass any act or omission on the part of a governmental actor, and the Plaintiff in this case has asserted a tort claim against Utah County for its negligent operation of a prison work-release program. The parties concede that under the most recent version of the Governmental Immunity Act, the County is immune from suit. The question, then, is whether the legislature's expansion of governmental immunity eliminated a cause of action that the Plaintiff could have maintained against the County before the Act was amended. If it did, then the Act's application in this case may run afoul of the open courts clause.

¶ 3 We conclude that the Governmental Immunity Act is not unconstitutional as applied in this case. Even before the Act's expansion of immunity, its blanket immunity protections extended to any liability that arose from the performance of a uniquely governmental function or other acts that are essential to a core government activity. In this case, the Plaintiff's negligence claim arises directly from a prison work-release program. Because incarcerating and rehabilitating inmates falls squarely within that definition, the Act would have shielded the County from liability even if the Plaintiff brought suit before the legislature expanded blanket immunity protections to encompass a much wider range of activity. We affirm the district court's ruling on that basis.

Background

¶ 4 This appeal followed the district court's dismissal of Mika Scott's complaint against Utah County, Intermountain Employment Services (IES), and Universal Industrial Sales (Universal). On appeal from a district court's decision granting a motion to dismiss, we view the facts pled in the complaint and all reasonable inferences from them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.¹ We recite the facts consistent with that standard.

¶ 5 For some time, Utah County has operated a program known as “Jail Industries,” which allows inmates to “work for private businesses in the community setting rather than on correctional institution grounds.” The County actively seeks out private businesses to participate in the program, “emphasizing that by hiring inmates,” the companies “assist in the rehabilitation of Utah County inmates, assist in the solvency of the Utah County budget, and receive a substantial discount on the price of labor.” The County retains seventy-five percent of the inmates' earnings, and over the past decade, the program has “produced over $5,000,000 in gross revenues.” Not all inmates are eligible for Jail Industries—the County screens each inmate that enlists in the program and does not place anyone it has not approved with a private employer.

¶ 6 IES worked with the County “to place” qualified inmates with private employers. In the past, “many” of these inmates “flagrantly disobeyed the rules they agreed to when enlisting” in the program, “walking away from the private jobsites” during the day, receiving illegal visits from friends and family, and using alcohol and drugs. But employers typically waited until the end of the work day to report these violations. Consequently, the County was aware that an inmate “could walk away from a private jobsite and the inmate's absence might not be noted for the better part of a day.”

¶ 7 One of the inmates the County selected to participate in Jail Industries was Shawn Michael Leonard. IES placed Mr. Leonard with Defendant Universal in June 2010. According to Ms. Scott's complaint, the County “improperly screened” Mr. Leonard “for approval within the Jail Industries program because of a known potential for violent behavior toward other people” and “his extensive criminal history, which included a prior sentence in the Utah State Prison.” Proper screening would have revealed that Mr. Leonard was “not eligible to participate” in the program and that he “posed” a particular danger “to young women living in the vicinity” of the work site.

¶ 8 But the County had “only one employee screen inmates and” did “not conduct [ ] one-on-one interviews with” Mr. Leonard or any other “inmates before placing them in the Jail Industries program.” These improper screening procedures resulted in part from the County's efforts to increase revenue—that is, “the total number of inmates in the Jail Industries program was driven by the demand from the private businesses, not by the supply of qualified inmates.” For their part, IES and Universal “knew or should have known that the participants in the Jail Industries program were actual inmates of Utah County, and that they were therefore not trustworthy and potentially dangerous to the public.” The companies also “knew or should have known” that the inmates “regularly broke” program rules, “including walking away from the private jobsite and potentially committing crimes, and engaging in alcohol and ... drug use.”

¶ 9 Mr. Leonard's participation in Jail Industries proved to be a tragic mistake. The County did not provide guards or any means of remotely supervising the inmates employed at Universal. And Universal failed to take any action to prevent the inmates from leaving the work site. As a result, on June 8, 2010, Mr. Leonard escaped. Universal did not report Mr. Leonard's absence until about one hour after his escape, and it took the County another hour to notify police that he had indeed left the work site.

¶ 10 The next day, Mr. Leonard approached Ms. Scott on the Provo River Trail about ten miles away from where he had been working. He grabbed Ms. Scott, covered her mouth, and told her not to scream. After forcing her off the trail into the bushes, Mr. Leonard strangled her with a shoe string. Ms. Scott soon lost consciousness, and Mr. Leonard then hit her repeatedly in the head with a cinder block, sexually assaulted her, and left. Ms. Scott survived, but her injuries were substantial. She had multiple surgeries to reconstruct her face and mouth; her jaw was wired shut for months; and she contracted a heart condition, permanent scars, anxiety, insomnia, and permanent double vision.

¶ 11 Ms. Scott filed a negligence action against the County, IES, and Universal in September 2011. She amended her complaint twice, and then all three Defendants moved to dismiss the second amended complaint. Ms. Scott opposed the dismissal and sought leave to file a third amended complaint. The district court ruled in favor of the Defendants, concluding that none of them owed a duty to Ms. Scott and denying her motion to amend as futile. As an alternative basis for dismissing the claims against the County, the district court also concluded that the Utah Governmental Immunity Act barred all of her claims against the County. Ms. Scott appealed.

¶ 12 Following oral argument in this case, Ms. Scott settled her claims against IES and Universal, but not the County. The parties to the settlement agreement then filed a suggestion of mootness under rule 37(a) of the Utah Rules of Appellate Procedure. We agree that Ms. Scott's claims against IES and Universal are now moot, and we accordingly dismiss them.² We have jurisdiction over the remaining claims under Utah Code section 78A–3–102(3)(j).

Standard of Review

¶ 13 Ms. Scott argues that the district court improperly dismissed her negligence claim for failing to allege enough facts to...