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Board of County Commissioners of Teton County v. Bassett7/25/2000
tiff must establish to maintain a negligence action in a court of law are: (1) that the defendant owed to the plaintiff a duty to conform to a specified standard of care; (2) that the defendant breached the duty of care; (3) that the defendant's breach of the duty of care proximately caused injury to the plaintiff; and (4) that the injury sustained by the plaintiff is compensable by money damages. See, MacKrell v. Bell H 2 S Safety, 795 P.2d 776, 779 (Wyo.1990); W. Page Keeton et al., Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts § 30 (5th ed. 1984). Elements (1) and (2), duty and breach of duty, address whether the conduct of the alleged tortfeasor was in fact negligent. Element (3), proximate cause, is considered only after negligence is first established to determine whether the tortfeasor should be legally responsible for his negligence. Finally, element (4), injury/damages, is considered to determine the extent of the tortfeasor's liability to the plaintiff if the foregoing issues are resolved affirmatively.
It is clear, upon careful analysis, that Keehn is concerned with the duty elements of the claim while the aspect of DeWald that the appellants rely upon as stating the duty really addresses the element of causation. Kirkwood v. Kelly, 794 P.2d 891, 894 (Wyo. 1990). That distinction was established many years ago in York v. North Central Gas Co., 69 Wyo. 98, 115, 237 P.2d 845, 850 (1951) (emphasis in original):
The elements of a cause of action for negligence are set out in Restatement of Torts, § 281, and Prosser on Torts, p. 177. In this case, we refer to only two of these elements which we distinguish by calling one the negligence question, the other the causation question. See Martin v. Herzog, 228 N.Y. 164, 170, 126 N.E. 814, 816. To establish actionable negligence plaintiffs had the burden of proving not only that the break in the line was due to defendant's lack of care (the negligence question), but also that the escaping gas was the gas that exploded in the building (the causation question).
Both DeWald and Keehn must be accounted for in the instructions to the jury in a case like this. It is essential that the concepts of DeWald and Keehn remain distinct rather than merged. One deals with proximate cause; the other deals with duty. Both are elements of the cause of action for negligence, and, under circumstances such as these, those elements must be correctly explained to the jury. The product of our analysis is that the district court should have instructed the jury to follow the causation standard announced in DeWald in determining the liability of the police officers and their respective employers in this instance.
The activities of the law enforcement officers in this case, although different in detail, cannot be distinguished from "an officer's pursuit of a vehicle which is involved in an accident not involving the officer's vehicle." DeWald, 719 P.2d at 649. The officers here were engaged in an effort to stop a violator of the law. If one of them had been in front of Ortega, instead of following him, as was the case in DeWald, surely the rule of causation announced in DeWald would be applicable. If the lead officer were far enough ahead of the fleeing violator to endeavor to structure a roadblock to stop that person, logic demands that the same standard be applied. It was reversible error to fail to instruct on the causation rule announced in DeWald.
A closely related issue is raised by the State's contention that Sergeant Wilson should have been granted judgment as a matter of law on the basis of qualified immunity. We do not agree because our prior cases, including DeWald, are to the contrary. The Wyoming Governmental Claims Act, Wyo. Sta
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