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Garrison v. Deshutes County6/21/2002
Argued and submitted November 3, 2000.
The decision of the Court of Appeals and the judgment of the circuit court are affirmed.
Durham, J., dissented and filed an opinion.
This personal injury case requires us to examine the scope of the immunity from liability that the Oregon Tort Claims Act (OTCA) grants to certain kinds of discretionary decisions of a public body. The case arose when plaintiff Gary Garrison was injured when he fell from a raised concrete slab onto a lower slab at a Deschutes County (county) refuse transfer station. Plaintiffs brought the present action against the county, alleging three specifications of negligence. The county moved for summary judgment, asserting that, by virtue of ORS 30.265(3)(c), it was immune from liability for the acts that plaintiffs alleged. The trial court agreed. On plaintiffs' appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that: (1) the doctrine of qualified immunity protected the exercise of discretion by county employees in designing the transfer station; and (2) the county's failure to warn plaintiffs of the obvious danger of falling off the higher slab did not expose plaintiffs to a greater risk of harm than if they had been warned. Garrison v. Deschutes County, 162 Or App 160, 986 P2d 62 (1999). We allowed plaintiffs' petition for review and now affirm.
Because this case comes to us on review of a grant of summary judgment, we view the facts and all reasonable inferences that may be drawn from them in favor of plaintiffs, the nonmoving parties. Robinson v. Lamb's Wilsonville Thriftway, 332 Or 453, 455, 31 P3d 421 (2001). Summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. ORCP 47 C. The parties accept the following recitation of the facts by the Court of Appeals:
"Gary Garrison was severely injured in a fall at the Fryrear transfer station, which is owned and operated by Deschutes County. The transfer station was designed and built using 'Z-wall construction,' which consists of a concrete upper slab with a 14.5-foot retaining wall that drops to a concrete lower slab. The design allows persons using the transfer station to back their vehicles onto the upper slab and dump their garbage into semi-truck trailers that have been placed on the lower slab. There is a seven-inch railroad tie at the edge of the upper slab that serves as a barrier to warn drivers not to back their vehicles any further. At the time of Garrison's fall, there were no other barriers or fences on the upper slab, and there were no signs warning users of the danger of falling from the upper to the lower one.
"The design and operating method of the transfer station were chosen and implemented by Larry Rice, the public works director for Deschutes County, and Al Driver, the director of solid waste operations for the county. The design engineer was Tom Blust, who worked under the supervision of Dave Horning. The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners had delegated the design and operation decisions for the transfer station to Rice and Driver. In the process of adopting the design for the transfer station, Rice and Driver considered other design options, including installing a fence, railing or other barrier at the edge of the upper slab, and other operating systems, including having patrons dump their refuse on the upper slab so that it later could be pushed off the slab and into the trailers below by transfer station employees, but determined that those options presented their own safety problems as well as economic disadvantages.
"On the day that Garrison was injured, he and his wife had driven to the transfer statio
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