Post by KC on May 7, 2006 20:35:07 GMT -5
Supreme Court: 911 dispatcher must give assurance of help or else county not liable for negligence
05/07/2006 - OLYMPIA, Wash. -- If a 911 dispatcher does not give "express assurance" of help to a caller who hangs up before requesting medical assistance, the county can't be held liable in court if that person later dies, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In an unanimous ruling written by Chief Justice Gerry Alexander, the court said that "there is neither a statutory nor a common law duty on the part of a county to dispatch medical aid under such circumstances."
But a sharply worded concurrence by Justice Tom Chambers - who agreed with the ultimate result of the ruling - said the court should re-examine the public duty doctrine, noting that the "absurdity of the doctrine and its analytical framework" comes to light in this case. Chambers' concurrence was signed by Justices Charles Johnson and Richard Sanders.
The ruling affirmed a Court of Appeals ruling, which upheld Lewis County Superior Court's dismissal of Mary Cummins' wrongful death lawsuit against Lewis County.
The case stemmed from the death of Leon V. Cummins in Centralia in December 1997. Cummins placed a 911 call, but only stated "1018 E. Street, heart attack" before hanging up. The call came after the 911 center had received a prank call from a phone booth near the Cummins' address. For reasons unexplained in the court documents, the phone booth number popped up when the Cummins' call came in.
The operator tried calling the phone booth number but it was busy. Another operator looked up the phone number for the E. Street address but got an answering machine.
The original dispatcher then sent a Centralia police officer to the pay phone, where the officer found a boy well-known to police. Under questioning, the boy said he'd placed the heart attack call. The officer cleared the 911 call as a "suspicious circumstance," then drove to the E. Street address, but did not stop or knock on the door.
Cummins' wife, Mary, arrived hours later and found her husband dead on the kitchen floor. After she called 911, the same police officer recontacted the boy, who then admitted he really hadn't placed the heart attack call.
When Mary Cummins called 911, her home number showed up in the 911 system. At that point, the 911 system was checked and found to be operating correctly, court documents said.
The high court cited the state's public duty doctrine, under which "no liability may be imposed for a public official's negligent conduct unless it is shown that 'the duty breached was owed to the injured person as an individual and was not merely the breach of an obligation owed to the public in general.'"
The county's attorney, Robert Novasky, said that under the public duty doctrine, if an operator assures a caller help is on the way, and help doesn't arrive, or arrives too late, the county can be held liable. But if no such promise is made, it can't.
"It's not a technicality," he said. "It's important that there be some standards and some restrictions so a government is not put in a position where they're responsible for damages in every situation regardless of what the circumstances may be."
But Cummins' attorney, Terry E. Lumsden, said that everyone is taught to call 911 in an emergency, and that most people don't expect that they have to wait for the operator to say something, or that they need to respond.
"It's baloney," he said. "People don't act that way in an emergency."
In his concurrence, Chambers agreed with the majority that there was no evidence that the county was negligent. But he expressed concern about the ruling's description of the public duty doctrine.
"The modern public duty doctrine ignores Washington's legislative waiver of sovereign immunity by creating a backdoor version of government immunity unintended by the Legislature," he wrote.
The state's sovereign immunity against lawsuits was waived in 1961 - meaning the state is not immune from lawsuits or liability.
Chambers notes that public perception is that 911 should be called in emergencies and there will be a prompt response.
"Could Lewis County ignore Mr. Cummins' call with impunity merely because the operator did not say some magic words of assurance as defined by our case law? The answer to that question should be a resounding no!" he wrote.
He noted that the county did not ignore the call and faced unusual circumstances due to the previous prank call, but said that the majority ruling "impermissibly granted government a special set of rules not afforded to others."
"Requiring an express assurance in every case is the moral equivalent of allowing malpractice suits against a doctor, lawyer, or architect for negligence only when the professional promises a successful outcome," he wrote.
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The case is Mary A. Cummins v. Lewis County et al. Docket Number 76249-0.