OLYMPIA, Wash. (Legal Newsline) - The Washington Supreme Court agreed with King County that it didn’t have a duty to protect a man who died just days after getting hantavirus close to his home in reversing a ruling against the county on April 2.
Sandra Ehrhart sued on behalf of her husband Brian Ehrhart, who passed away in 2017. She faulted the county (via its health department), Swedish Health Services and ER doctor Justin Warren Reif for her husband’s diagnosis, which is passed through deer mice droppings.
A trial court ruled in favor of Mrs. Ehrhart, despite the county’s argument that it didn’t owe her late husband a duty as an individual. Now, the Supreme Court is reversing that order.
“We ultimately conclude that the [public duty] doctrine clearly applies in this case and precludes [Mrs.] Ehrhart’s claims against King County,” the justices determined. “King County owes a duty to the public as a whole. Because no exception applies in this case, the public duty doctrine bars [Mrs.] Ehrhart’s suit.”
The lower court erred when it ruled as if the public duty doctrine and discretionary immunity doctrine are the same thing, the ruling says. While they are often the center of many cases, there’s an obvious difference between that isn’t always acknowledged, the justices pointed out in the opinion.
The public duty doctrine specifically bars individual negligence claims like this, because governmental entities (such as the county) owe duties to the community, not individuals; at the same time, the discretionary immunity rule is “rotted in the separation of powers principles inherent in our constitutional system of government,” according to the opinion.
Mrs. Ehrhart didn’t show that any exceptions to the public duty doctrine are at play in this case as she didn’t, in the least, claim that King County had a duty to implement and impose certain mandates against individuals.
Chief Justice Debra L. Stephens wrote the opinion.