Increase in Negligence Suits Demands Serious Thinking
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The Editor’s Opinion Page
During the last few years, there has been a small but increasing trend to file damage suits against fire departments, fire chiefs and municipalities. We have watched this trend with growing concern because it imposes an unwarranted burden on the fire service.
The City of Pittsburgh earlier this year entered into a settlement of a suit over a warehouse fire. The city will pay a total of $823,725 in installments to a group of claimants, including the property owner, the warehouse operator, companies that had goods in the warehouse, the insurer of the warehouse and six owners of nearby properties.
There have been a number of suits brought against fire departments and municipalities, but this is the first suit we know of that has come to a conclusion. The city solicitor advised the Pittsburgh City Council that the agreement worked out with the litigants was advisable in his opinion because the total amount of damages a jury might award was more than $12 million.
Charges of negligence at the Beacon Warehouse fire in 1973 were made and denied. The specific issues are not important. The important fact is that a suit based on fireground operations has ended in a cash settlement.
Up to a decade or so ago, suits were not filed against fire departments because courts followed a landmark decision a century ago that declared only the chief in charge of the fire could judge what action should be taken to extinguish a fire. However, the courts are now indicating that suits against fire departments are feasible in this suit-conscious era. There seems to be widespread feeling that whenever something unfortunate happens to someone—even if it is his own fault—someone else must pay for it.
Fireground commanders have an awesome responsibility for lives and property. Must they also work under the additional burden of avoiding a lawsuit against themselves as well as their municipality?
Volunteer fire departments face a lawsuit threat that is particularly dangerous because many of them are incorporated and they have no assurance that the municipality they protect will reimburse them for any judgments against them. It would not take a court award of much money to a plaintiff to bankrupt most volunteer fire departments.
Insurance is available to protect fire departments and fire chiefs against the costs of suits charging negligence and acts of omission, but that is not the ultimate answer. It leaves out an important party in the issue—the municipality. A Connecticut state lawsolved the problem of lawsuits against drivers of fire apparatus involved in accidents by making the municipalities responsible for reimbursing drivers—including volunteer fire fighter drivers—for any judgments against them unless they were grossly negligent.
The problem raised by the suits against fire departments has no pat solution. It does, however, demand a lot of hard thinking by those at the highest levels of municipal, county and state governments.
