The "public duty doctrine" was cited by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in a March 28, 2013, decision, Woods v. District of Columbia, in dismissing a negligence lawsuit against the District based upon the actions of a District ambulance crew responding to a 911 call. The public duty doctrine prevents suits by individuals who receive public services like other members of the general public. Consequently, actions classified as "public duty" may not be the subject of private suits under the view that the government has no duty to provide public services to any particular citizen. This comment will briefly discuss the court's decision and the public duty doctrine generally.
Woods claimed that a mistaken diagnosis by the ambulance crew worsened her condition and that the diagnosis created a "special relationship" that went beyond the services provided to the public generally. The Court's opinion indicated that the public duty doctrine limits the ability to sue in negligence cases even where sovereign immunity might not apply. The Court cited several of its prior decisions in reaching a conclusion in the Wood's case. One situation involved incorrect assertions by a police dispatcher to criminal victims that help was on the way resulting in their revealing to the criminal their hidden location. Another case involved a police officer at the scene of a house fire mistakenly stating that the children had been removed resulting in the plaintiff parent ceasing rescue attempts. In both cases the public duty doctrine prevented a negligence claim.
In the Woods case a concurring opinion by Judge Oberly urged the reconsideration and possible abolition of the public duty doctrine. The judge believed that there should be a better balance between a citizen's right to seek redress for injuries and the emergency providers' concerns that their actions would be dissected at a subsequent trial.
The public duty doctrine has been addressed in numerous state and federal court decisions. The North Dakota Supreme Court in 2004 explained the reasons for the public duty rule, while declining to apply it, in the context of a building code issued certificate of occupancy:
"First, it is impractical to require a public official charged with enforcement or inspection duties to be responsible for every infraction of the law. Second, government should be able to enact laws for the protection of the public without exposing the taxpayers to open-ended and potentially crushing liability from its attempts to enforce them. Third, exposure to liability for failure to adequately enforce laws designed to protect everyone will discourage municipalities from passing such laws in the first place. Fourth, exposure to liability would make avoidance of liability rather than promotion of the general welfare the prime concern for municipal planners and policymakers. Fifth, the public duty rule, in conjunction with the special relationship exception, is a useful analytical tool to determine whether the government owed an enforceable duty to an individual claimant."
While decided on different grounds, The U.S. Supreme Court in a 2005 decision involving a private lawsuit concerning police enforcement of a restraining order wrote:
"Even if the statute could be said to have made enforcement of restraining orders "mandatory" because of the domestic-violence context of the underlying statute, that would not necessarily mean that state law gave respondent an entitlement to enforcement of the mandate. ... The serving of public rather than private ends is the normal course of criminal law... ."
One of the more difficult aspects of the public duty doctrine is distinguishing a "special relationship" that imposes liability from one of general services where no liability is imposed. The public duty rule might be viewed as a specific variation of "sovereign immunity" that precludes many suits against the government by private citizens. In any event, the public duty doctrine prevents private lawsuits.