A City Beyond Reproach: How the GTLA Shields the Government From Negligence Claims

When a government employee’s negligence causes an accident, the injured victims are limited in what they recover for their injuries.

As a young Memphis police officer raced to provide backup for a colleague on quiet Sunday afternoon, he drove through a red light without emergency lights or sirens and into an intersection south of downtown where he collided with a 1996 Mercury Mystique and killed a woman and child visiting from Senatobia, Mississippi.

Thirteen-year-old Mackala Ross, a seventh-grade basketball and clarinet player at Senatobia Junior High, died instantly. So did her father’s girlfriend, Delois Jean Epps, 54. Her dad, Michael Ross, and a family friend were hospitalized for their injuries. Ross has been in and out of the MED for the last two months due to complications from the accident.

Memphis Mayor AC Wharton has asked the Tennessee Highway Patrol for an independent investigation of the accident. Yet, The Commercial Appeal has reported that city officials have concluded the officer was at fault in the accident and are prepared to compensate all the victims together for a total of $700,000, which is the maximum allowable under state law in Tennessee where the Governmental Tort Liability Act (“GTLA”) provides special protections from civil liability for government entities.

If you or I or some other non-governmental employee with private insurance as required by state law had caused such an accident, the victims would come closer to being fully compensated for their injuries. For starters, each victim’s injuries would be considered independent of the other victims’ damages, and there would be no “per incident” cap on the amount for which the at-fault individual could be liable. Additionally, the victims would be able to claim and collect reimbursement for all of their compensatory damages, instead of being limited to a $300,000 per person cap.

However, in the case of Mackala Ross and her family the rules are different. Because the accident that took Mackala’s life was caused by an on-duty police officer, her family will not be able to seek compensation beyond the $300,000 per person cap. Unfortunately, it is possible that Ross’s family will not even receive $300,000 because Ross’s injuries have to be considered in conjunction with the other victims of the accident. In no case will the Memphis Police Department have to pay more than $700,000 for the entire accident, regardless of the actual amount of physical and emotional damages endured by the victims and their families.

Interestingly, the goal of the GTLA was to allow governmental bodies to be sued in certain circumstances. Prior to the enactment of the GTLA in 1974, Tennessee courts routinely embraced and upheld the doctrine of sovereign immunity. This common law doctrine had its roots in the old English aristocratic notion that “the King can do no wrong,” and thus cannot be sued in court. For obvious reasons, this doctrine did not comport well with a modern day republic, and in the 1970’s state legislatures around the country started enacting statutes that specified exactly when a private citizen could sue a governmental body for its negligence. To protect the government from large damage awards rendered against it, the legislature placed caps on the amount of money that a victim of an accident could recover from a city or municipality.

Now, $700,000 may seem like a sizeable amount for the four victims, two who died and two who survived, to share, but when you consider the cost of health care today the amount is paltry. For example, a patient on ventilation in the intensive care unit can spend as much as $10,000 per day for their hospital stay. Even treatment outside of the intensive care unit can cost as much as $1500 per day. Add to those amounts the costs of any future medical costs, physical rehabilitation, and/or prescription medication and it becomes clear that $700,000 is hardly enough to compensate one seriously injured accident victim for their medical expenses. When four victims have to share $700,000, the value of the life of the deceased, and the pain and suffering of the injured, is reduced to $175,000 each.

Unfortunately, police officers and other emergency response vehicles are involved in traffic accidents at an alarming rate. As of October, Memphis police officers have been involved in over 200 auto accidents this year. In 2011, the number of MPD officer involved crashes was over 400 — averaging well over one accident per day. With statistics like these, it is not surprising that the city of Memphis wants to limit its liability by invoking the GTLA.

Victims of accidents involving the negligence of government employees need to be aware of the limits of their potential recovery. As with any auto accident, victims need to seek the professional services of an attorney in order to maximize their compensation. Further, Tennessee citizens should put pressure on the state legislature to raise the statutory caps on damages caused by government employees, as well as to allow punitive damages for egregious behavior. The notion of “personal responsibility” is a two-way street, and until these changes are made to the GTLA, individuals who are severely injured due to the negligence of government employees will remain undercompensated.