 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Dore v. City of Fairbanks9/28/2001
e Dore children failed to allege that the police took charge of him in any other manner. (Indeed, the entire lawsuit is grounded on the police's failure to take him into custody.) The Dore children did allege that the state negligently "releas Jack J. Dore from mental confinement, at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital," but they subsequently dismissed all claims against the state. Because the police did not take charge of Jack Dore, the police had no tort duty to control him under Restatement § 319.
In addition, the Dore children offered no evidence that the police knew or should have known that Jack Dore was likely to cause bodily harm. The Dore children offered the warrant for his arrest, but it charged him with only harassment, a class B misdemeanor. Even if we assume that the police knew of Jack's death threats to Carmen, the generality of the threats failed to give the police substantial enough information upon which to act.
The Dore children contend that City of Kotzebue v. McLean establishes that the city owed a duty to Carmen Dore, her children, and even Jack Dore. The Dore children argue that the city, simply by maintaining a police force and responding to the complaints of death threats, has a duty to all citizens who either make or are the targets of death threats. The city responds that the duty of reasonable care set forth in McLean is only applicable to the class of cases narrowly defined by the facts in McLean and that the city owes no duty to Jason Dore as the son of a person injured by police failure to protect.
In McLean, we concluded that the police owed a duty of care to reasonably respond when police received a death threat from the assailant who identified himself and the scene of the crime minutes before committing the crime. We expressly defined the class of cases that McLean governed to include the circumstances present in McLean: (1) a police officer received a life-threatening call from the would-be assailant, (2) the police officer knew the identity of the caller-assailant, (3) the potential assailant identified the likely scene of the crime, (4) the police officer knew the proper response was to go and check out the scene, and (5) the police officer failed to contact another available officer to investigate.
In Adams v. State, we rejected the public duty doctrine, exposing a relatively undeveloped area of law: general tort duties of the state or local government. To facilitate development of this area, we initially adopted an ad hoc approach to duty analysis. In the light of our recent decisions urging less fact-specific inquiries in duty analysis, McLean should be understood as imposing a duty of reasonable care on the police to respond to threats of imminent, life-threatening, assaultive conduct when given sufficient specific information to respond. Thus, the specific facts of McLean are important only insofar as they indicate a relationship between the police and the imminent crime victim.
The present case is not in the same class as the imminent harm case of McLean. It is significant that in McLean the police, advised by the assailant, knew the likely time and place of the crime. In this case, the Fairbanks police had little idea when or where Jack might carry out his threat, or even if he would do so. Therefore, this case is not governed by the McLean duty of the police to reasonably respond to situations of imminent danger.
We conclude that the police had no tort duty to control Jack Dore because this case is not governed by McLean and because the requirements of Restatement § 319 are not met. Because this case falls within the class of cases using the Restatement framework to determine if a defendant ha
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 Alaska DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|