TACOMA, Wash. (Legal Newsline) – A Washington county will have to face claims it failed a woman who was beaten by her estranged husband who was under electronic home monitoring and had a history of violence.
The Feb. 9 decision by the Washington Court of Appeals says Heather Durham’s estate adequately alleged Pierce County failed its “take-charge” duty in the supervision of Abel Robinson, an HIV-positive paraplegic who was sentenced to a year of electronic home monitoring for methamphetamine charges in 2016.
His criminal history listed 18 counts of assault, domestic violence and harassment at the time of that sentencing. He was supposed to either begin the monitoring or report to jail by Aug. 5, 2016, but did neither.
He remained unmonitored and left his residence repeatedly to attack Durham. He punched her in the face and slammed her head into a wall on one occasion. It took until January 2017 for officials to realize Robinson was not being monitored, and Durham sued two years later. She has since passed away.
Pierce County had a take-charge duty to take reasonable precautions to protect against foreseeable dangers posed by those in supervision, Judge Lisa Sutton wrote.
“The County argues it owes no duty because Robinson was ordered to serve his sentence on probation, which program did not exist in superior court at that time, and it never had Robinson in its supervision, control, or custody,” Sutton wrote.
“In other words, the County argues that because it had no ability to supervise Robinson, and because it never attempted to supervise Robinson, it had no take-charge duty. A take-charge duty exists because…, the County had statutory authority to confine Robinson and a court order requiring it do so existed.”
The decision overturns a Pierce County judge’s ruling to throw out the claim.