HOUSTON - The 14th Court of Appeals today affirmed a ruling denying a plea to the jurisdiction brought by the Texas Department of Public Safety in a lawsuit over a peace officer’s automobile collision.
Ratan Zakir sued DPS under the Texas Torts Claims Act, asserting that the TTCA waives the DPS’s sovereign immunity for claims involving personal injury and property damage caused by the negligent operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle by a DPS employee.
At the time of the collision, the officer had just entered an intersection against a red light to pursue a vehicle that had run the red light when the vehicle driven by Zakir hit the side of the officer’s patrol car, according to the 14th Court’s opinion.
DPS answered the lawsuit and filed a plea to the jurisdiction and, in the alternative, motions for traditional and no-evidence summary judgment, which the trial court denied, resulting in the appeal.
On appeal, the DPS argued that the trial court erred by failing to dismiss the case for want of jurisdiction because it retained immunity both under the emergency exception of the TTCA and because the officer was shielded by official immunity.
The 14th Court found that the officer entered the intersection before crossing traffic had stopped and that he had to come to a complete stop in the intersection to avoid hitting traffic going in the opposite direction of Zakir– making the potential risk of the course of action clear.
“Because DPS’s evidence did not address alternative actions that (the officer) could have taken and did not otherwise establish that a reasonably prudent officer in the same or similar circumstances could agree that the need to immediately stop the (individual who ran the red light) outweighed the risk of harm to the public, the burden never shifted to Zakir to produce controverting evidence,” the opinion states.
Justices affirmed the trial court’s order denying the DPS’s plea to the jurisdiction and motions for summary judgment.
Case No. 14-20-00679-CV