.jpg)
DES MOINES, Iowa (Legal Newsline) - Iowa taxpayers may be on the hook for a fatal crash that occurred after a drunk driver sped the wrong way down a highway at more than 100 mph and collided with a police car going the other way, the state’s highest court has ruled.
A confusing “diverging diamond interchange” on Interstate 80 near Des Moines, the first in the state, may be the reason Benjamin Beary drove down an off-ramp at high speed and slammed his car head-on into a police cruiser carrying two officers and a prisoner, the Iowa Supreme Court said in a May 11 decision.
All four occupants died on the scene. The husband of officer Susan Farrell sued a number of defendants including the state of Iowa and the city of West Des Moines, claiming the interchange was negligently designed and had improper signage.
The government defendants moved to dismiss the case, citing the public duty doctrine, which shields the government from lawsuits over injuries caused by third parties. The trial judge refused their request but an appeals court ruled the doctrine applied, saying “the instrumentality starts and ends with an intoxicated Beary driving on the wrong side of the road.” Beary was estimated to be driving at 102.91 m.p.h. at the time of the accident, with a blood alcohol concentration well more than twice the legal limit and he tested positive for marijuana.
The Iowa Supreme Court reversed that decision, ruling the lawsuit slipped through an exception to the public duty doctrine for allegations of “egregious conduct.”
First, the court said the public-duty doctrine “remains alive and well in Iowa.” But it has an exception for negligence that creates an unsafe condition on government property, however, the court said. To blame the accident entirely on Beary would absolve the government of responsibility for the danger it created by building the confusing interchange, the court said, comparing this case to one in which a pedestrian trips on an improperly designed curb and knocks down another person.
“Does the additional factor of Beary’s reckless driving bring this case within the public-duty doctrine?” the court asked. “We think not.”
The court refused to consider the plaintiffs’ argument the state had a “special relationship” with Farrell negating the public duty doctrine entirely, saying it wasn’t necessary.
Justice Brent Appel, in a concurrence, said he would go further and scrap the public-duty doctrine as being barred under the Iowa Tort Claims Act governing lawsuits against the government. “Unworkable factual hairsplitting” is inevitable, he said, unless the doctrine is abolished.