Police officers must exercise reasonable care when directing drivers to pull over for traffic violations

Law Reporter, Dec 2001

Lugtu v. California Highway Patrol, 28 P. 3d 2,49 (Cal. 2001) .

The California Supreme Court held that a police officer owed a duty of reasonable care to a family he stopped for a traffic violation, where another vehicle on the highway subsequently struck the family's automobile.

Here, Lugtu and his children were passengers in an automobile pulled over by a police officer and directed onto the center median strip of a highway. A pickup truck collided with the vehicle, resulting in injuries to the family. The family sued the state highway patrol and the officer, alleging the officer failed in his duty to them of reasonable care when he directed their automobile to stop in the center median. The officer, plaintiffs contended, should have directed their vehicle over to the right shoulder, as provided in the state officer safety manual. The trial court granted defendants summary judgment, finding that the officer did not owe a duty to plaintiffs. An appellate court reversed.

Affirming the intermediate appellate court, the state high court noted that, under state law, public employees are liable for injuries caused by their actions to the same extent as private individuals, except as provided by statute. In general, an individual is obligated to exercise due care so as not to create an unreasonable risk of injury to others. This duty is ordinarily owed to the class of persons who it is reasonably foreseeable may be injured as the result of the individual's conduct. The duty to exercise reasonable care includes the duty not to place another person in a situation where that person is exposed to an unreasonable risk of harm through reasonably foreseeable conduct.

The court rejected defendants' argument that the duty plaintiffs rely on is limited to instances of misfeasance, and therefore, the officer did not breach the duty because his actions involved nonfeasance. Misfeasance exists when a defendant is responsible for making a plaintiff's position worse by creating a risk, the court explained. Nonfeasance occurs when a defendant fails to aid a plaintiff through beneficial intervention. Here, plaintiffs' cause of action does not rely on an assertion that defendants should be held liable for failing to aid plaintiffs, the court said. Rather, plaintiffs' claim is based on the officer's affirmative conduct in directing plaintiffs to the center median and, consequently, placing them in a dangerous position and creating a serious risk of harm. Thus, plaintiffs' claim is based on misfeasance, not nonfeasance.

Further, citing case law, the court found that other courts have uniformly held that a police officer who directs an individual to stop at a particular location owes that person a duty to use reasonable care in giving that direction so that the person is not exposed to harm. Therefore, although officers generally do not have a duty to come to the aid of a person in carrying out routine traffic enforcement, a duty of care does arise when an officer engages in an affirmative act that could increase the risk of danger to the person.

Plaintiffs" Counsel

Charles B. O'Reilly, Marina del Rey, Cal.

Steven W. O'Reilly, Marina del Rey, Cal.

Rita Gunasekaran, Santa Monica, Cal.