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District of Columbia v. Chinn12/31/2003
clusory and do not raise a cognizable claim of negligence. Maddox's complaint described injuries received "as a consequence of excessive force alleged to have been exercised by the arresting officers." There was no dispute that the physical contact was intentional. His complaint thus failed to specify the necessary elements to proceed with a negligence action. Since the statute of limitations had run on the intentional tort, summary judgment was properly granted. Maddox at 764-65.
Sabir, supra, involved a suit for injuries received when the plaintiff was arrested by officers; she alleged claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and for negligence by the officers in her seizure, arrest, custody, and transportation. Her complaint stated that the officers, "negligently caused the assault and battery, arrest and detention of plaintiffs." Sabir at 452. The trial court granted a directed verdict, concluding that "the negligent assaulting of someone based strictly on a negligence theory" did not constitute a valid cause of action. Id. We affirmed, reiterating that one incident may give rise to both negligence and intentional tort claims but that plaintiffs must set forth theories meeting the individual requirements of each claim. 755 A.2d at 452. Sabir "combined these two theories into a single cause of action, in essence pleading a nonexistent cause of action," i.e., it is impossible to negligently commit assault and/or battery as the states of mind are separate and incompatible. Id. (quoting 1 F. HARPER & F. JAMES, THE LAW OF TORTS, § 3.52 at 3:19 (3d ed. 1996)). "In other words, a plaintiff cannot seek to recover by 'dressing up the substance' of one claim, here assault, in the 'garments' of another, here negligence." 755 A.2d at 452.
In the second line of cases, appellee, as did the trial court, relies principally upon District of Columbia v. White, 442 A.2d 159 (D.C. 1982). There, we addressed an award of damages to survivors in a wrongful death action based on the shooting by a police detective of what turned out to be an unarmed man. The plaintiffs had filed an action against the government alleging assault and battery, negligent use of excessive force, and negligent training of the detective; a jury found the government liable for negligence (without specifying the type of negligence) but not for assault and battery. This court decided that the issue of negligent training should not have been submitted to the jury, requiring a new trial, but that the other claims were permissible. Id. at 162-63. Basically there were two scenarios for the shooting, one where the decedent was standing with empty hands having stopped fleeing, and the other where the officer shot in self-defense as the decedent turned toward him with what was thought erroneously to be a gun. In upholding the separateness of the negligence claim, we noted the admission into evidence of a police regulation on an officer's safe use of firearms, which established that a duty was owed to the decedent, a breach of which would constitute evidence of negligence. Perhaps somewhat confusingly, we also noted the existence of D.C. Code § 4-176 as constituting "further evidence of negligence." See discussion infra.
The White court noted that it was not bound by plaintiff's claims of negligence and instead should "examine the elements of the alleged offense to determine which causes of action the complaint actually states." Id. at 162. Citing Maddox, supra, the court noted that the complaint must specifically allege negligence and not merely conclusory allegations. However, White found that District of Columbia v. Downs, 357 A.2d 857 (D.C. 1976), was controlling for the proposition that "a jury could properly find negligence in the shooting
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