Where There's Smoke ...

Ohio - When the employees of Lewisburg, Ohio started burning debris out back of the village's water plant on February 7, 2000, they had no idea that their blaze would spark a lawsuit that would burn all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court.

On that February afternoon, village employees set fire to a pile of scrap lumber, tree limbs and discarded Christmas trees. The fires were located about 2,000 feet north of Interstate 70. At around 3:30, the employees covered the burn piles with dirt and left the area.

Later that night, just before 11, the Preble County Sheriff's Office received a complaint about smoke in the location of the earlier burning. When firefighters arrived, they found four or five piles of smoldering brush. One firefighter testified that smoke from the piles hung close to the ground and moved south toward the interstate.

That point was significant because that same evening there was a multiple-car accident on the interstate near the Lewisburg exit. Drivers on I-70 claimed that a mixture of fog and smoke had created visibility problems on the highway that night.

Asserting that the smoke contributed to the accident, the people involved in the pile-up brought claims against the village. But the trial court concluded by summary judgment that Lewisburg was immune from liability. The trial court determined that Lewisburg's actions fell under the general immunity from civil liability granted to political subdivisions by state law.

Why would a political subdivision – such as a city or village – be immune from civil liability? The answer is “sovereign immunity,” a legal concept that dates back to old English law, which proclaimed that the king – the sovereign – could not be sued. Since we have no king, the concept of sovereign immunity in our country was applied to governmental entities. It was meant to protect the government and its employees from civil liability for injuries or losses that public employees might cause in the performance of their duties.

Over the years the laws in Ohio have been amended, and there are certain exceptions to immunity. One of those exceptions, which was in effect at the time of the accidents, stated that political subdivisions are liable for injuries “caused by their failure to keep…public grounds within the political subdivision…free from nuisance.”

The trial court concluded that since the accidents happened on the freeway and not on village property, this exception did not apply to Lewisburg. But the court of appeals disagreed. The appellate court reversed the trial court, holding that the exception did apply, and that Lewisburg was not immune from liability.