LINCOLN, Neb. (Legal Newsline) - Adopting a broad interpretation of the state’s sovereign-immunity statute, the Nebraska Supreme Court said a prisoner who was stabbed in his cell can’t sue prison officials for placing him in the same unit as the murderer of his brother.
A majority on the Nebraska Supreme Court reiterated that the State Tort Claims Act bars lawsuits arising from an “assault,” regardless of whether that is by state employees or someone else. The decision drew a lengthy dissent from one justice, who said the majority’s interpretation conflicts with how the U.S. Supreme Court reads a nearly identical federal statute and should be corrected by state legislators.
Cameron Williams sued the state for placing him in the same unit as Jonathan Armendariz, who was convicted of killing his brother, despite the fact they were on a “keep separate” list and both Williams and his mother had pleaded with prison officials to keep them apart. Williams claims he assaulted Armendariz out of fear for his safety, and friends of Armendariz later stabbed Williams in his cell.
A county court dismissed his lawsuit, citing sovereign immunity. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed, stating in a Dec. 17 decision that the tort claims act waiving sovereign immunity from some claims contains broad exceptions for any claim “arising out of assault, battery, false imprisonment” and several other offenses.
The state Supreme Court has interpreted that language to bar claims by people who blame assaults on negligence by government officials, such as a woman who said a faulty 911 response led to her being held hostage and sexually assaulted by a former boyfriend.
“The exception not only bars claims for assault and battery, but bars claims arising out of an assault and battery,” the majority ruled. “The injury and damages Williams alleges plainly arose from Williams’ preemptive assault on Armendariz, from the retaliatory assault on Williams, and from Williams’ fear of a potential assault on him by Armendariz.”
The majority acknowledged its interpretation has been criticized as unduly generous to the government but said legislators are considering changes to the tort claims act.
“That public policy debate in the Legislature is ongoing, and this court should allow it to develop unencumbered by judicial rhetoric urging any particular legislative outcome,” the court said.
Justice Lindsey Miller-Lerman dissented, reiterating arguments she made in two previous dissents. The law shouldn’t shield the government from every lawsuit “if there is an
assault by anyone anywhere in the picture,” the judge wrote. Prison officials knowingly placed Williams and his brother’s killer in the same unit and violence predictably ensued, the judge said.
“This is how it works under current Nebraska jurisprudence: State actors can be dangerously negligent with impunity and immunity if a nonstate actor later perpetrates an expected assault,” she wrote, saying that this and other rulings her colleagues placed the court “in the awkward position of entreating the Legislature to consider restoration of the intentional tort assault exception to the status quo ante.”