LINCOLN, Neb. (Legal Newsline) - Road construction contractors can’t be held liable for the death of a police officer who steered around multiple barricades before slamming into a parked crane, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled, rejecting arguments a jury should have been allowed to decide whether additional warning signs would have prevented the deadly accident.
Officer Curtis W. Blackbird with the Omaha Tribal Police was responding to an emergency domestic violence case in March 2017 when he decided to take a shortcut through a construction site on Highway 94 to arrive at the scene quicker. He maneuvered his police cruiser around nine barricades and five signs stating the highway was closed but then drove into a crane parked in the work area. He wasn’t wearing seatbelts and was killed by the impact.
His widow sued Knife River and three other contractors working on the site for negligence, claiming they had a duty to make the site safer for Blackbird. But Thurston County Judge John Samson dismissed the case for lack of a triable issue of fact and the Nebraska Supreme Court, in a Feb. 18 decision, affirmed the dismissal.
Saying it was addressing for the first time the interpretation of a provision of state law, the high court said the accident occurred on property owned by the Nebraska Department of Transportation, where the statutory duties of the state and its contractors are limited. The law states that if barricades and warnings are in place, a driver who has not specifically been invited onto the construction site proceed there “at his own peril.”
Blackbird wasn’t among the class of people authorized to travel on the closed road, the court ruled, so the restriction on liability applied to him.
A fellow officer who preceded Blackbird through the barriers said he slowed down to 5 mph and successfully maneuvered around the crane. He said he was watching Blackbird’s headlights in the rear-view mirror until they disappeared as he hit the crane.
The plaintiff’s expert hypothesized that the contractors could have used additional warning devices but didn’t identify anything the contractors did or failed to do that violated regulations or standards. The state Supreme Court had previously ruled contractors aren’t required to place signals or flares at hazards if there are warnings or barricades at the beginning of the construction site.