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| The corn mash is in the foreground. |
Pick it up, clean it up, do it
right and keep it safe. Local governments in Nebraska… from city hall to your
volunteer fire department… will need to make sure hazards on roads and public
spaces get taken care of completely.
In
a ruling issued today the Nebraska Supreme Court narrowed the protection of
immunity local government has against personal injury lawsuits.
I
covered the story of Kaelynn Kimminau of Hastings this spring for NET News. The Adams
County District Court threw out her lawsuit against the City of Hastings fire
department and its rural volunteer counterpart. She claimed they hadn’t
properly cleaned corn mash spilled from an open truck picking up the sloppy
leftovers from a local ethanol plant. Firefighters on the scene had pushed the
corn mash off to the shoulder. The accident occurred a full day after the
original spill.
Did the fire department act
negligently? In its opinion the Supreme Court says at the very least the judge
in Adams County should not have dismissed the case even before hearing the
evidence. The court ruled local governments do not have immunity from lawsuits when
an emergency scene clean up may have been responsible for later injuries or harm.
As the justices wrote in today's opinion, they don’t read
state statute covering these matters “as providing immunity to a political
subdivision with respect to a claim alleging it took inadequate measures to
repair a spot or localized defect of which it had notice.”
In this case, the
firefighters had been told of the problem the day before the accident. The
possibility they didn’t clean the corn mash mess at the time takes away
automatic protection from lawsuits. The implications? Attorneys NET spoke with
before today’s ruling wondered if a ruling against the City of Hastings would
mean in the future it could apply to emergency crews not picking up debris from
a traffic accident or not making full repairs on a public building.
The case has been sent back to
Adams County District Court where Kaelynn Kimminau will have the opportunity to
argue the City of Hastings was the blame for the accident. That has not been
resolved. In fact the Supreme Court
justices made the point of adding:
We do not comment on the merits of the Kimminaus’ claims against the political subdivisions, including questions with respect to duty, as those issues have not yet been addressed by the district court.
Read the court’s full opinion HERE.
