SALT LAKE CITY (Legal Newsline) – A Utah county might still be liable for injuries suffered by a man who stood next to a planned explosion at SWAT training.
The state Supreme Court on Feb. 17 overruled a trial court decision that dismissed personal injuries claims against Weber County. The Supreme Court found an injury waiver was not enforceable and that there remains an issue of whether the county committed negligence and/or gross negligence, which would void protection offered by the Governmental Immunity Act.
At issue in the GIA was the language that waives immunity - “any injury proximately caused by a negligent act or omission of an employee committed within the scope of employment.”
“In other words,” Justice John Pearce wrote, “a grossly negligent act is still a negligent act. And when the Legislature waived immunity for negligent acts, it waived immunity for negligence in all of its forms.”
The trial court, in a strict reading of the GIA, had ruled gross negligence didn’t waive governmental immunity.
Plaintiff Brian Cunningham at the time a Layton City firefighter, was told to stand a few feet away from an explosive on a door while attending a SWAT training provided by Weber County.
The explosion produced a piece of shrapnel that caused severe injuries to his face and neck, so he sued the county for placing him so close without protection.
Complicating his lawsuit was the injury waiver he signed before that “unconditionally and irrevocably” absolved Ogden Metro SWAT and “all related organizations and entities.”
The trial court found this release enforceable, but the Supreme Court said Utah law disfavors preinjury releases like it. Justice Pearce wrote that a previous ruling recognized broad language in them as enforceable but not without a clear unmistakable intent “to release each other from their own negligent acts.”
“(A) preinjury release must clearly and unmistakably inform a reasonable person who and what she is releasing to be enforceable,” he wrote. “It is not enough that we might be able to squint at the preinjury release language and conclude that a reader ‘might have known’ or ‘probably knew’ that she was releasing a certain party or claim.”
The court found Ogden Metro SWAT’s release did not clearly release it and related organizations from liability for their own negligence.
“Instead, it uses broad, general language that does not specifically nor unequivocally evince an intent to hold the released party blameless for its own negligent conduct,” the court ruled.