No sovereign immunity for Virginia City or the truck driver between garbage pickups

The Virginia Court of Appeals ruled that a trial court erred in finding that a garbage truck driver and the city of Chesapeake were protected by sovereign immunity for their role in an accident caused by the truck driver who ran a stop sign. stop and collided with a car.

The lower court reasoned that sovereign immunity is appropriate because the entire process of driving a garbage truck involves continuous discretion that does not begin and end each time the driver stops to collect trash along the route.

But the appellate court decided differently and remanded the case for further proceedings, concluding that when the accident occurred this city garbage driver was doing nothing but driving to the place where he would then perform his garbage collection function.

“Many decisions in the Commonwealth have addressed the issue of when a government employee driving a vehicle is immune from suit. When the operation of a vehicle involves ordinary driving, the employee’s actions are ministerial, not discretionary, and ministerial acts are not covered by immunity,” the Court of Appeals concluded.

Although a garbage truck driver sometimes engages in activities involving discretion and judgment between scheduled stops, that was not the case here, the appeals court continued. The driver of the garbage truck admitted that he was driving normally at the time of the accident. Case law requires a court “to focus not on the job description as a whole, but on the employee’s actions at the time of the accident,” the court wrote in reverse.

Ran Stop Sign

According to court testimony, when he was about 10 percent of the way into his assigned garbage collection route for the day, the truck driver approached an intersection with a two-way stop sign. Instead of coming to a complete stop, he intentionally “went through the stop sign.” As he rolled into the intersection, Taylor Jolley’s car, coming from the right and not running a stop sign, collided with the truck and flipped onto its side. Jolley suffered serious injuries.

Following the accident, the truck driver was charged and convicted of failing to obey a stop sign. Jolley sued the driver and the city of Chesapeake in Chesapeake Circuit Court, alleging simple negligence. The driver and the city responded with a special claim of sovereign immunity.

During the circuit court proceedings, when asked if “between the boxes, you’re doing anything different than if you were normally driving down the street in your own car,” the truck driver said, “no.” Instead, what he does between stops is “search his surroundings and make sure everything is clear” so he can “grab the container, throw it, and move on to the next one.” The truck driver has about 800 houses on his route and said that every time he drops off a bin, a counter counts the number of bins.

The circuit court ruled that the city and the driver were immune from suit, finding that “during this time on the road, going from box to box, being 10% on his route, counting every basket that is dropped into his box,” they there were “special risks” to this unique trial and that “the exercise of judgment and discretion was required throughout this course.” The court determined that the entire act of garbage collection required continued discretion and judgment, despite the regular traffic between individual stops along the route. As a result, the lower court granted the city and the driver immunity from suit.

Jolley appealed.

The Court of Appeal noted that there is a four-factor t testa to assess whether a government worker is entitled to immunity, but only one factor is at issue in this case: whether the truck driver used reason and discretion at the time of the collision. Ministerial acts, which do not involve the exercise of judgment and discretion, are not entitled to immunity. According to the court, the reasoning is that virtually every act performed by a person involves the exercise of some discretion, and the mere presence of any “discretion is not always determinative.”

Drawing the line between discretionary and ministerial acts is particularly difficult when a government employee is involved in an accident while driving a government vehicle. In such accident cases, the court said it looks at “whether the means of carrying out the applicable governmental function involves “ordinary driving in routine traffic” versus driving that requires a “degree of judgment and discretion beyond ordinary traffic driving situations. routine”.

One way to distinguish driving acts is to assess whether a vehicle serves as a means of transportation to get to the place where the government function is to be performed, or whether the driving of the vehicle is the means of performing the government function. Sovereign immunity tends to protect drivers who, in addition to driving a vehicle, must exercise discretion and judgment to accomplish a governmental purpose. In contrast, simply driving a vehicle to the place where a government function is to be performed is analogous to an “ordinary driving situation” that does not involve special risks or a high degree of discretion.

School bus driver

According to the appeals court, common sense distinguishes a school bus driver with children on board from one who drives an empty school bus where She would engage in the government duty of transporting children. The state Supreme Court has also found that operating a government combination “snowplow/salt truck” to spread salt during a snowstorm requires judgment and discretion beyond that involved in ordinary driving.

When first responders respond to emergencies, the government vehicle is used for the government function itself. The task of making an emergency response requires the driver to engage in special risks that a driver in routine traffic does not. For this reason, immunity is appropriate when a police officer is involved in a vehicular pursuit.

Returning to this case, the parties agree that the driver of the truck was performing a government job of garbage collection on the day of the accident. But they disagree about whether he used the judgment and discretion inherent in the task of garbage collection when he ignored a stop sign. The employee argues that the act of garbage collection should be viewed as a whole and that the entire garbage collection process requires judgment and discretion beyond that of ordinary management.

The trial court adopted this position, finding that the evidence showed that he had to make decisions en route, such as determining how to pick up and empty each individual box and when to empty the truck before continuing.

The Court of Appeal found that the law required a different result. The trial court did not conclude that, at the time the stop sign was run, the truck driver was actually exercising discretion and judgment as to what to do with this load. The employee’s own testimony is that between boxes, he was doing nothing different than “normally driving down the street.” There is also no evidence that he calculated when or how to pick up the next box or the total weight of his truck by ignoring the stop sign.

“Normal Driving”

The appellate court also considered relevant the fact that, at the time of the accident, the truck driver was simply driving the garbage truck as a means of transportation. Unlike a first responder driving in an emergency, he was not involved in “snap decisions balancing serious personal risks, public safety concerns, and the need to achieve the government’s objective.” He wasn’t actively picking up trash like the snowplow driver was using his vehicle to skip a street.

In conclusion, the appeals court found that the evidence showed that the truck driver was driving normally to get to the next stop when the accident occurred. His driving between the bins, during which he ran a stop sign and collided with Jolley’s car, was a ministerial act. For this reason, the city and the truck driver are not entitled to the protection of sovereign immunity.

The appeals court added that this opinion does not mean that sovereign immunity starts and stops with every house along a garbage route — in this case, about 800 stops a day. Indeed, the evidence shows that the garbage collection function is more than simply picking up an individual box. But the evidence is equally clear that at the time of the accident, this driver was doing nothing but driving to the place where he was going to perform his garbage collection function.

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