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Board of County Commissioners of Teton County v. Bassett7/25/2000
t granted the State's motion for summary judgment on the basis of common law qualified immunity, which we recognized in Kimbley v. City of Green River, 663 P.2d 871, 883 (Wyo. 1983). DeWald, 719 P.2d at 646. This Court held that the implied immunity defense did not apply to operational functions of the patrolmen, which do not qualify as the basic, discretionary, policy-making type of functions that the defense of qualified immunity protects. DeWald, 719 P.2d at 649.
We affirmed the summary judgment, but not because we applied a standard of care other than the one set forth in Keehn v. Town of Torrington, 834 P.2d 112, 114 (Wyo. 1992). Instead, we said:
The liability of a police officer for pursuing a law violator who becomes involved in an accident causing damage to a third person has not before been considered by this court. A review of the decided cases exhibits a considerable reluctance to find the officers liable where they are not involved in the accident.
The policy reasons stated are that the officer has a duty to apprehend, arrest and remove from the highways drunk drivers; that if, in the performance of his job as a patrolman, he must choose whether to pursue or allow a lawbreaker to escape, he should not be liable for either choice in the absence of gross or wanton conduct almost amounting to bad faith; that he should be responsible only for the careful operation of his own car; and that he should not be liable for the unpredictable actions of the driver being pursued for that would make him an insurer of the wrongful acts of a lawbreaker. All of the above seem to essentially say that, except in extreme or outrageous circumstances, an officer's pursuit of a vehicle which is involved in an accident not involving the officer's vehicle is not the proximate cause of that accident.
We agree with these courts and hold that when a police officer pursues a fleeing violator and the violator injures a third party as a result of the chase, the officer's pursuit is not the proximate cause of those injuries unless the circumstances indicate extreme or outrageous conduct by the officer. To put it another way, the possibility that the violator will injure a third party is too remote to create liability until the conduct of the officer becomes extreme. DeWald, 719 P.2d at 649-50.
The nature of the duty applied in DeWald is the same as the duty articulated in Keehn, 834 P.2d at 114, in which DeWald is cited. The causation feature of DeWald was emphasized in a later case:
"Proximate cause means that the accident or injury must be the natural and probable consequence of the act of negligence. The law does not charge a person with all the consequences of a wrongful act, but ignores remote causes and looks only to the proximate cause." DeWald v. State, Wyo., 719 P.2d 643, 651 (1986) (citation omitted). Harmon v. Town of Afton, 745 P.2d 889, 891 (Wyo. 1987).
Even so, the appellants were entitled to have the district court give the offered instruction. We have identified the elements of a cause of action or claim for negligence as:
he defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff; the defendant breached that duty; the defendant's breach proximately caused the plaintiff's injuries; and the plaintiff was injured. Anderson v. Duncan, 968 P.2d 440, 442 (Wyo.1998) (citing Turcq v. Shanahan, 950 P.2d 47, 51 (Wyo.1997); Daily v. Bone, 906 P.2d 1039, 1043 (Wyo.1995)). To prevail, the plaintiff must prove all four elements of the negligence claim. Bird v. Rozier, 948 P.2d 888, 892 (Wyo.1997). Kirby v. NMC/Continue Care, 993 P.2d 951, 954 (Wyo. 1999).
In Keehn, 834 P.2d at 115, we said:
The elements that a plain
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