Agenda - Council - 01/12/1982 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I Recent court decisions increasingly eroded the concept of a special act qualifying the tort liability of local government. However, the special vulnerability of far-flung government operations to debilitating tort suits continues to require existence of a tort claims act applicable to local governments or local governments and the state. In order to protect and continue the effective- ness of the Municipal Governmental Tort Lia- bility Act, the League proposes the following amendments. 1. The workers' compenstaion law presently gives an injured person or his representative an option to collect damages in a regular civil action against a tort-feasor who is not his employer or to collect workers' compensation from his em- ployer if the worker is eligible for workers' com- pensation for the injury. The workers' compensa- tion act grants workers' compensation insurers or self-insurers paying such claims a right of subro- gation for the amount of the claim and reasonable attorney's fees against the party causing the damages. The governmental tort liability act, however, purports to remove the above mentioned election and to permit only the workers' compen- sation claim if a city is the alleged tort-feasor. In order to clarify the interaction of the two statutes, and to convince the courts that it is the legislature's intent to permit only the workers' compensation claim against cities when the injured party is covered by workers' compensation from his own employers, the right of the claimant's insurer to recover the amount of compensation payable together with attorney's fees should be set out in the Governmental Tort Liability Act as well as the workers' compensation statutes. 2. Punitive damages do not serve their pur- pose of making public employers exercise some modicum of responsibilty to the public if there is a requirement or even a likelihood of reimburse- ment by the public employees. Nor is the likeli- hood of promoting diligent and reasonable per- formance of duty enhanced by unlimited or large punitive damage liability possibilities which en- courage officers and employees to shift the res- ponsibility to insurers and thus back to the public. Therefore, the League urges that the Governmental Tort Liability Act be amended to permit, at the discretion of the governing body, reimbursement of punitive damages awards by public employers. Further, the Act should be amended to limit awards of punitive damages to $1,000,000 per incident, an amount sufficient to permit vindi- cation of citizen rights when actual damages are insignificant and to make public officers and employees take their responsibilities seriously. -7- 3. The limits on individual and aggregate lid~ bility under the municipal and state acts should be made coincidental and raised to more realistic levels. 4. In theevent that the legislature determines to make further changes in the existing law, those changes should only be in the direction of making the local government tort liability statute more similar to the state governmental tort liability law. 11-10. Home Rule (C) Minnesota's constitutional home rule policy, while permitting home rule charter in some cir- cumstances to depart from the provisions of sta- tutes that would otherwise be applicable, has made charters subject to the provisions of state laws when they express a policy intended to override local charters. In implementing that policy, the legislature has often by a general law authorized one or more classes of home rule charter cities to meet new problems for which existing charters listing city power in specific detail provided inadequate authority. It has also, by general law and increasingly by special law, removed charter restrictions or imposed restrictions where the local charter had none. Following the adoption of the 1958 local government amendment to the Minnesota Constitution, the legislature has, on League recommendation, made it easier for cities to adopt and amend charters and thus better able to meet local legislative needs at home. In an effort to provide for more consistent policy on the relationship between state law and local charters, the League recommends to its own member cities as well as the legislature the following guidelines on meeting legislative needs of home rule charter cities: 1. Every general law applying to cities should state specifically whether or not it applies to home rule as well as to statutory cities. 2. When a uniform state policy is not required, a law applying to home rule charter cities, whether applicable with or without local action, should authorize an affected city to supersede the law or any provision in it by charter action on the same subject. 3. When a legislative problem can be met'sim- ply by a charter amendment, particularly where amendment by ordinance is feasible, state legis- lation on the subject should not apply to home rule charter cities. Some existing obsolete legisla- tion applying to home rule charter cities was re-