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Bill Would Offer Lawsuit Protection

March 3, 2006

Cities and other governments trying to limit their exposure to multimillion-dollar lawsuits are taking their battle to two fronts this week: the Legislature and the state Supreme Court.

They hope to win support for a bill that would protect them from being sued for police work, court supervision and other services they exclusively provide.

Attorney General Rob McKenna said of the bill that they also hope that the state's highest court will decide the City of Fife is not responsible for a habitual drunken driver who, while on probation, killed a Tacoma woman.

It is the second Pierce County case in a year involving a death caused by an ex-convict under government supervision. Both have gone to the Supreme Court.

Washington governments pay out millions of tax dollars as a result of damage claims filed against them.

Tacoma attorney Thaddeus Martin represents the family of Heather Benskin, which filed a claim for $20 million in the Fife case. They say the city's probation department didn't properly supervise drunken driver Jong Hoon Kim, who killed Benskin on Highway 16 in a 2003 hit-and-run incident.

Cities and counties are lobbying for the legislation in Olympia, hoping to get out of potential lawsuits resulting from a wide variety of services they provide.

McKenna said Washington governments have paid out about $450 million in tort settlements and verdicts since 1987. That's chiefly the result of a 1961 law that waived the state's immunity against lawsuits without limitation, he said.

At the attorney general's request, Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, has introduced Senate Bill 6215. It awaits a hearing today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Kline is chairman.

He said the bill likely will be amended to focus on cases in which someone under government supervision could have controlled his or her own behavior.

However, Kline thinks governments might bear some responsibility, for instance, when a driver gets into an accident at a bad intersection and sues a city for not posting a stop sign.

Government agencies are also closely monitoring the Fife case, which proponents of the liability legislation often cite as a reason for reform.

In spring 2004, the Pierce County Superior Court ruled that the court said the city's probation department acts as an arm of the court and thus enjoys judicial immunity.

But the state Court of Appeals reversed the decision last October, saying the city owed certain duties to the victim and her family.

The high court ruled on a similar Pierce County case in September. It held the Department of Corrections responsible for a vehicular homicide by an ex-convict who was under state supervision.

The case centered on the question of who was responsible for the actions of Vernon Valdez Stewart, who crashed into Paula Joyce's pickup in Tacoma in 1997, killling the 21-year-old woman.

Stewart was smoking pot, speeding and running red lights. Joyce's family sued the state, saying it should have had Stewart on tighter supervision for an assault he'd committed two years earlier.

The state Supreme Court sent the case back to Pierce County Superior Court.

The state eventually settled for $6.5 million - the largest wrongful-death payout it had ever made.