Court denies police immunity under state tort claims act in death of intoxicated man in protective custody

Michael Coghlan CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

In a lawsuit over the death of an intoxicated man in police protective custody, the defendants were not entitled to immunity under exceptions to the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act (MTCA), the Commonwealth Appeals Court held in April.

Police in New Bedford, Mass., took the plaintiff's decedent into protective custody upon finding him in a state of heavy intoxication and disturbing the peace. Police put the man in a county jail cell, where he got into an altercation with another detainee. The other detainee pushed the man to the ground, where he hit his head. The man died from complications of the injury.

Defendant officials sought immunity from the plaintiff's negligence lawsuit under the discretionary function exception to the MTCA, section 10(b), and under the causation limitation of MTCA section 10(j).

Section 10(b) is similar to the discretionary function exception of the Federal Tort Claims Act. It disallows tort claims when public defendants exercise policy-making discretion, even when discretion is abused. The theory behind this exception is that public officials require latitude to make decisions, good and bad, and not every government decision should be second-guessed in litigation. The tort claims act reserves for litigation cases in which standards of conduct are set or clear, and the plaintiff alleges negligence relative to that standard.

The court denied defendants discretionary function immunity, because state law provides that persons in protective custody should be held at police stations, referred to appropriate care facilities, or returned home. The plaintiff alleged that the decedent's commitment to the county jail was improper and proximately caused the injury and death. Police had no discretion under the law to detain the decedent in the county jail.

MTCA section 10(j) is a creature specially of commonwealth law and articulates a potent liability limitation arising in causation. Section 10(j) disallows liability for 

any claim based on an act or failure to act to prevent or diminish the harmful consequences of a condition or situation, including the violent or tortious conduct of a third person, which is not originally caused by the public employer or any other person acting on behalf of the public employer.

Thus, state defendants disavow liability under section 10(j) when the plaintiff's liability theory is in the nature of a failure to supervise or intervene, and the more proximate cause of the injury is the conduct of a third party. Here, the defense pointed to the push to the ground by the decedent's fellow detainee, if not the decedent's own provocation.

The court also denied the defendants 10(j) immunity. The official act relevant to the plaintiff's claim was the decision to place the decedent in a county jail cell with potentially dangerous detainees, the court opined, not the precise mechanism of injury that ensued.

The case is Baptista v. Bristol County Sheriff's Department, Nos. 20-P-731 & 20-P-778 (Mass. App. Ct. Apr. 15, 2022). Justice Peter J. Rubin wrote the opinion of the unanimous panel.

State tort claims act disallows claim of 911 negligence

Plaintiffs in a fatal stabbing could not overcome sovereign immunity in alleging negligent delay of emergency response, the Massachusetts Appeals Court held last week.

A 28-year-old man with "psychiatric issues" went on a murderous "rampage" in Taunton, Mass., killing two people and injuring five more, before being shot and killed by an off-duty law enforcement officer, as reported by WBZ Boston in 2016.  In the course of the rampage, the perpetrator broke into the home of 80-year-old Patricia A. Slavin, where he stabbed her to death and also stabbed her daughter.

The perpetrator was shot and killed at the Galleria Mall in Taunton, Mass.,
after attacking patrons and fatally stabbing a diner who challenged him.
(Photo in 2020 by James Walsh CC BY-SA 4.0.)

It was more than 20 minutes after the daughter's desperate 911 call that a fire truck arrived on the scene, and more than 30 minutes for an ambulance, according to the court's recitation of the facts.  The Slavin plaintiffs alleged that negligence by a 911 dispatcher directed first responders to the wrong address and contributed to Slavin's death and her daughter's distress.

Negligence liability in American common law requires not mere causation, but proximate causation, which can be a slippery concept.  States waiving sovereign immunity in tort claims acts can use proximity of causation as a device to narrow permissible claims.

The Massachusetts Tort Claims Act does so through its section 10(j), which precludes liability for "any claim based on an act or failure to act to prevent or diminish the harmful consequences of a condition or situation, including the violent or tortious conduct of a third person, which is not originally caused by the public employer or any other person acting on behalf of the public employer" (my emphasis).

The legislature intended the provision for a case such as this one, the Appeals Court wrote in dismissing the claims. "It is true that a more prompt response by city personnel might have diminished the harmful consequences of the stabbings, but the lack of a prompt response was not the original cause of the harm" (footnote omitted).

A claim against the ambulance service, a private contractor, is unaffected by the dismissal.

The case is Slavin v. American Medical Response of Massachusetts, No. 19-P-1762 (Mass. App. Ct. Jan. 11, 2021).  Justice Peter Sacks authored the opinion for a unanimous panel that also comprised Justices Henry and Englander.

Commonwealth wins two in tort: one, bad presentment; two, no duty to juvenile assaulted in contractor custody

The Commonwealth prevailed in two tort suits under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act at the end of February.  One case, a slip-and-fall, was decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on the procedural ground of untimely presentment.  The other case, involving a physical assault on a juvenile with tragic consequences, was decided by the Massachusetts Appeals Court on the merits of attenuated duty and causation in civil rights liability.

Leicester Town Hall, 2006.
Photo by Pvmoutside CC BY-SA 3.0.

In the first case, "plaintiff, Katherine Drake, slipped and fell at Leicester High School while picking up her grandson during school hours. She suffered multiple injuries, including a fractured knee and wrist."  Drake mailed her presentment (notice, or demand) letter to the Town of Leicester precisely on the two-year anniversary of the accident.  The Massachusetts Tort Claims Act requires presentment within two years, and the Commonwealth moved to dismiss on grounds of untimeliness.

The Supreme Judicial Court declined to construe the statute liberally.  "Drake does not contend that her mailed letter could have arrived on that same day, nor does she contest that the office of the proper executive officer received the presentment letter ... a full two years and three days after she was injured," the court observed.  "Given our conclusion that presentment occurs upon delivery to the office of the proper executive officer," the court affirmed dismissal.

Long Island in Boston Harbor, 2008.  Photo by Doc Searles CC BY-SA 2.0.

The second case described horrific injury inflicted on a juvenile in state custody.  A "youthful offender," Williams was in Casa Isla, "a program for juvenile males located in a facility (now closed) on Long Island in Boston Harbor. Casa Isla was operated by Volunteers of America of Massachusetts, Inc. (VOA), a nonprofit entity under contract with [the Department of Youth Services (DYS)] to operate youth residential programs." (There were other problems at Casa Isla, e.g., MassLive, WBUR.)  During a flag football game, Williams was randomly attacked by a 17-year-old resident of another VOA-operated treatment program on the island, Project Rebound, who "said he wanted to get 'kicked out.'"  After the attack, Williams experienced worsening headaches and bodily pain, but initially was given only ibuprofen.  After later emergency medical intervention, Williams was diagnosed as having "suffered ... a middle cerebral artery stroke, seizures, and cerebral edema. As a result, he now has severe and permanent brain damage. Williams currently resides in a residential program and requires twenty-four hour care."

The last bridge to Long Island was demolished in 2015.
Photo by Eric Kilby CC BY-SA 2.0 (2017).

Upon suit under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act, the courts rejected state liability upon various theories of DYS responsibility for the conduct of contractor VOA.  DYS and the Commonwealth had no direct involvement with the management of Casa Isla or Project Rebound, so had not even the predicate knowledge that might support liability on a civil rights theory.  Accordingly, the Appeals Court affirmed in rejecting theories of Eighth Amendment, supervisory, and vicarious liability.  Similarly, absent any affirmative act by state officials, the Commonwealth, conversely, remained within the protection of state sovereign immunity.

Associate Justice William J. Meade

Drake's case reinforces the importance of legal educators continuing to teach the 19th-century "mailbox rule," however much Generations Y and Z might not intuitively apprehend its logic.  Williams's case, however sorrowful the outcome, reinforces basic (no affirmative) duty doctrine in "constitutional tort."  As a policy matter, Williams's case also might raise questions about the wisdom of outsourcing juvenile custody without providing for public accountability.  Oh, and let's make a new rule: Anytime you're going to imprison people on a harbor island with a grisly history, that raises a red flag.

The cases are Drake v. Town of Leicester, No. SJC-12781 (Mass. Feb. 28, 2020) (Court Listener, Suffolk Law, Mass. Lawyers Weekly), and Baptiste v. Executive Office of Health and Human Services, No. 18-P-1353 (Mass. App. Ct. Feb. 28, 2020) (Justia).  Justice David A. Lowy wrote for a unanimous court in Drake.  Justice Meade wrote for a unanimous panel with Shin and Singh, JJ., in Baptiste.

Area man signposts 'sovereign immunity site'

Attorney Dan Greenberg, friend of the blog and a federal policy adviser in Washington, D.C., contributes this photo from his home neighborhood of Alexandria, Va.

The sign reads:

City of Alexandria

Sovereign Immunity Site

 Did you know ...

     The City of Alexandria claims "sovereign immunity" from liability for damage its trash collection truck did to this fence.

     That's right.  On May 22, 2019 a city truck hit and broke this fence.  It's on video!  But none of that matters.  They're immune from liability.

What is sovereign immunity?

     Simply put, the term sovereign immunity is derived from British common law doctrine based on the idea that the King could do no wrong.

     So be careful around City of Alexandria vehicles.  They can do no wrong.

The underlying dispute was reported by Fox 5 D.C. in October.  A trash truck caused $5,000 in damage to Denis Goris's 30-year-old iron fence.



Sovereign immunity turns up often in a society in which government is pervasive in our lives and surroundings, and that's bound to cause frustration.  The sign-bearer is right that the essence of immunity is inequitable, as between the plaintiff who suffers an injury and the defendant sovereign who caused it.  The Federal Tort Claims Act waives federal sovereign immunity in a narrow class of cases, and states can be less generous with their tort claims acts.  The broader aim that keeps immunity going in a democracy is the protection of public assets, which belong to all of us.

It looks like Alexandria does use city staff for trash collection.  Contractors throw a wrinkle into the mix (federal, state).  I am not a Virginia lawyer; what I know of the state's tort claims act, it treats counties and cities much more generously than state-level actors.  The localities enjoy near absolute sovereign immunity for governmental functions, and, almost 50 years ago, the Virginia Supreme Court held that municipal trash collection is a governmental function entitled to immunity.  Alexandria does have an administrative claim process, and there's some room to argue.

The city told Fox 5: "Under federal and state laws and court rulings, the City is generally not liable for damages caused in the course of providing core government services. While the City conducts extensive planning and training to avoid damaging property, some damage does occur given the vast scope of City operations. Exemption from these claims saves a significant amount of money every year for taxpayers as a whole."

In a story last year, NBC 4 Washington reported: "Alexandria Won't Pay $4,600 in Damages to SUV Caused by City Trash Truck."  The city is as consistent with its tort claims as it is with its driving record.

[SUPPLEMENT: "Why is this still a thing?," Planet Money asks about state sovereign immunity in the context of excellent coverage of the copyright case pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, Allen v. Cooper.]

Mass. Superior Court dismisses nuisance claim over airport skydiving concession on Cape Cod

Chatham Municipal Airport approach (CC BY 2.0 woodleywonderworks)

The Superior Court in Barnstable, Massachusetts, ruled in favor of the Town of Chatham against a citizen group earlier this month over the town's award of a skydiving concession at the Chatham Municipal Airport, the Cape Cod Times reported.  Arguing for summary judgment, the town relied on preemption by FAA regulations in asserting that it had no choice but to award the concession for a lawful activity.  The court agreed, according to the newspaper.  The trial court arguments were detailed by Tim Wood in a story for The Cape Cod Chronicle in May.  According to Wood's reporting, the citizens argued "that skydiving is not safe and is a nuisance, with multiple flights and screaming and yelling by tandem jumpers interfering with the 'quiet enjoyment' of their property. They point to a 2012 crash of a skydiving plane into Lovers Lake after it ran out of fuel and the severe injuries suffered by a tandem jumper as evidence of the safety concerns."

Chatham Municipal Airport on Cape Cod

City not liable for bullying that resulted in child's quadriplegia, Mass. supreme court holds (and note on infantilization of faculty in higher ed)

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) affirmed application of the Massachusetts Torts Claims Act (MTCA) to protect the City of Lynn, north of Boston, from liability in a tragic bullying incident that resulted in the permanent paralysis of the victim, a fourth grader.  The case is Corimer v. Lynn, No. SJC-12323 (Feb. 27, 2018).

The boy's mother had reported bullying and harassment of her son on "multiple occasions" in the 2007-08 school year.  Ultimately bullies pushed the boy down stairs, resulting in damage to his spinal cord and in quadriplegia.

The 1978 MTCA waives sovereign immunity, but a public actor may be held liable for the tort or violence of a third party only if the public actor "originally caused" the "harmful consequences."  Mass. G. L. c. 258, § 10 (j).  The courts have struggled to interpret that language, but have, as the SJC restated the rule, looked for "an affirmative act that materially contributed to creating a condition or situation that resulted in [plaintiff's] injuries."  A failure to act is distinguished.

The school left the bullies in class in proximity to the plaintiff, and we may assume arguendo that the school was negligent in failing to protect the plaintiff.  Even so, those failures were "'too remote as a matter of law'" to represent material contribution to the plaintiff's injuries.  In essence, then the "originally caused" standard seems to effect a causation-at-law analysis heightened above even the stringent inquiry invoked upon an intervening criminal actor.  On the same basis, the court rejected ancillary plaintiff theories predicated on negligent hiring, supervision, and retention of school staff.

The SJC acknowledged "that bullying is a serious issue" comprising "the emotional pain of day-to-day harassment" and sometimes, as here, "horrific physical consequences."  "[T]he elementary school could have and should have done more to protect [the plaintiff]."  Nevertheless, the operation of the MTCA is textbook, furthering the "public policy [of] some reasonable limits to governmental liability in order for taxpayers to avoid a potentially catastrophic financial burden."

Allow me a tangential observation about bullying policy:  

Many workplace entities, private and public, and including my own, are busily about the business of formulating "anti-bullying" policies.  At least in the academic context, I find these efforts nothing less than an end-run of contract, tenure, and academic freedom, calculated to suppress dissent and vigorous debate.  This SJC case indirectly illustrates the problem.  

Bullying is a concept derived from the K12 environment.  In the adult workplace—especially in the academic workplace, where the very job is the exercise of free expression—bullying is co-extensive with harassment, discrimination, tort, and crime.  All of those were present in Corimer, harassment even before the child was physically injured.  There is no need for a separate policy purportedly to enforce civility (as if such a thing even were possible) among adults.  Any effort to create such a policy is nothing more than an authoritarian perversion of modish terminology—on campus, the infantilization of the faculty—and a disservice to children who truly are bullied in school.

Error that led to Texas mass murder recalls recent tort claim against police after Massachusetts shooting

The Air Force yesterday admitted that it failed to pass on information about the violent record of the Texas church shooter that might have stopped him from having ready access to firearms (WaPo).  Good on the USAF, by the way, for coming clean quickly, however tragic and futile the admission is now for the 26 people who lost their lives.  That angle of the Texas story caused me to pull back up a Massachusetts Appeals Court decision that last week I filed away as "unremarkable." 

After an escalating argument in Somerville, Mass., in 2012, Santano Dessin shot Carlos Andrade "in the neck, shattering Andrade's spine and leaving him paralyzed from the neck down," the court recounted (Boston.com).  It turned out that Dessin possessed three firearms, including the one he used to shoot Andrade, and he should not have had them because of a prior juvenile delinquency adjudication.  The Somerville Police Department at one point had confiscated the three firearms from Dessin, but then returned them erroneously.  Despite subsequent notice to the department by public safety authorities and the Superior Court that Dessin remained disqualified from possessing firearms, police failed to re-confiscate them.  Andrade and family sued police for negligence under the Massachusetts Tort Claims Act (MTCA).

The court rejected liability under the MTCA § 10(e), which, typically of state sovereign immunity laws, disallows tort claims predicated on "any claim based upon the issuance, denial, suspension or revocation or failure or refusal to issue, deny, suspend or revoke any permit, license, certificate, approval, order or similar authorization."  The court reasoned, "A local police department's duties to receive, store, and dispose of weapons when a person's firearms license is revoked or denied 'are central to the functions that are immunized from liability by § 10(e)'" and "'cannot be parsed from the remainder of the process'" (quoting Smith v. Registrar, 66 Mass. App. Ct. 31, 33 (2006)).

Guns and Somerville, Mass., share a revolutionary history.

However routine and appropriate a construction of statute the Mass. App. decision is, it points up a policy problem that played out with tragic consequences in Texas.  Gun control opponents including the NRA routinely contend that gun control proponents' job-one should be enforcing the laws that are already on the books, rather than lobbying for new ones.  On the enforcement question, we should all be on the same page.

The merits of our unusual cultural value in gun ownership, as expressed in the Second Amendment, and the appropriate scope of reasonable regulation, may be debated.  Nevertheless, at present, we hold gun ownership as a presumptive, fundamental right.  At the same time, declining to regulate gun ownership on the front end of the transaction means that, on the back end, we must vigorously enforce properly adjudicated deprivations of the right.  Public safety--the competing fundamental right to life--requires no less.

In the area of freedom of expression, we vigorously, presumptively, and even prophylactically protect free speech.  But after proper adjudication, we allow proscription of obscenity, criminal punishment of conspiracy, and enforcement of defamation liability.  Perhaps we ought exercise greater care with prophylactic protection of Second Amendment rights, because the potential consequences of error are grave.  But that wasn't the problem in Massachusetts or Texas, where the risk of error was real and known.

The case is Andrade v. City of Somerville, No. 16-P-1407 (Mass. App. Ct. Oct. 30, 2017).

Court holds no duty/no cause in rape case against state

Sovereign immunity and affirmative duty were at issue in a state tort claims act case of tragic facts decided 3-2 upon rehearing in the Massachusetts Appeals Court on April 12.  Pedagogically, the case well illustrates the famous interchangeability of duty and causation, my favorite articulation of which appeared in then-Circuit Judge Scalia’s footnote 4 in Romero v. NRA, 749 F.2d 77, ¶ 10 (D.C. Cir. 1984).  On the nuts and bolts, the case well reiterates and demonstrates the strict application of the no-affirmative-duty rule under the state tort claims act, even in a famously progressive jurisdiction.

Plaintiff Jane J. alleged rape by a male patient while they both occupied the recreational TV room of a locked unit of the Tewksbury State Hospital.  The court engaged solely with the question whether failure to segregate male and female patients in the rec room legally caused the rape under the state tort claims act.  Holding no cause, the court, per Justice Diana Maldonado, affirmed summary judgment for the Commonwealth.

Here illustrated in 1907, the Tewksbury State Hospital is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The classic American case of (no) affirmative state duty for law students studying due process in constitutional law is DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989).  The U.S. Supreme Court rejected liability for state failure to intervene and prevent fatal child abuse.  The case essentially restated the peculiarly American “no duty” doctrine of common law for the context of “constitutional tort.”  Thus the rule of no affirmative duty manifests across the contexts of common law, due process, and sovereign immunity.  The doctrine of federal law is replicated in the states, though may be varied by statutory interpretation when claims are controlled by state waivers of sovereign immunity in tort cases.  In this Massachusetts case, statutory interpretation of the state claims act molded the question into one of causation—though the DeShaney question nonetheless constitutes the heart of the inquiry.

Arguments focused on state claims act Mass. Gen. L. ch. 258, § 10(j).  In relevant part (a list of exceptions omitted here), the section maintains sovereign immunity against “any claim based on an act or failure to act to prevent or diminish the harmful consequences of a condition or situation, including the violent or tortious conduct of a third person, which is not originally caused by the public employer or any other person acting on behalf of the public employer.”  Thus the problem of affirmative duty is phrased in terms of “original[] cause[],” and the appeals court set out to determine whether non-segregation could be said to have been an “original cause” of the rape.

In the court’s interpretation, original cause is “strict,” requiring “‘an affirmative act [not a failure to act] … that creates the “condition or situation” that results in harm’” (quoting precedent; court’s added text; my italics).  The court recounted a series of cases rejecting recovery under § 10(j), including one case that held state lifeguards having negligently abandoned their posts was not the original cause of a drowning.  That result pertained even though the argument for an intact causal chain was stronger for lack of an intentional and criminal intervening actor.  Jane J.’s claim could not survive such strict examination.

Justice Gregory Massing, joined by Justice Peter Rubin, filed a vigorous dissent predicated on special relationship duty arising from involuntary commitment, or alternatively, on the merits, arguing in the latter vein that the “hospital ‘materially contributed to creating,’ and did not merely fail to prevent, the condition that resulted in the plaintiff’s being attacked in the common room.”

The case is Jane J. v. Commonwealth, No. 15-P-340 (Mass. App. Ct. Apr. 12, 2017) (Justia).

Lawyers, read carefully: 'Presentment' held defective under state tort claims act

Flickr photo by bradlee9119 per Creative Commons license

A cautionary tale from the Massachusetts Appeals Court yesterday, per Justice Peter Sacks, reminds lawyers to read statutes carefully.


Plaintiff was among five persons (perhaps family, based on the names of four) injured in a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) bus accident.  Her lawyer filed a claim with the "MBTA Claims Department," the transmittal asking that the claim be referred to the appropriate authority.  The MBTA made settlement offers to the five, and only Plaintiff turned down the offer and opted to pursue litigation instead.

The Massachusetts Tort Claims Act requires presentment of a claim to the "executive officer" of the defendant state entity.  The trial court let the difference slide under a statutory exception allowing for correction of defective presentment upon the executive officer's actual knowledge of the claim.

The appeals court reversed, ruling that the exception must be construed narrowly.  Neither the attorney's request to forward nor logical inference was sufficient.  The court awarded the MBTA summary judgment.

The court acknowledged that the ruling is "a harsh result," especially considering that it probably mattered not at all to the MBTA claims process whether its executive received notice.

The case is Coren-Hall v. MBTA, No. 16-P-300 (Mass. App. Ct. Feb. 23, 2017), here at Mass.gov, here at Mass. Lawyers Weekly, and here at Justia.

[UPDATE, Dec. 17, 2018: In a December 2018 negligence case against the MBTA under the state tort claims act, the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed "that the MBTA had waived the affirmative defense of inadequate presentment by failing to plead it with the required specificity and particularity." The case is Theisz v. MBTA, No. SJC-12559 (Mass. Dec. 12, 2018).]