Probation Officer Liability and the Public Duty Doctrine

A recent court of appeals case, Blaylock v. N.C. Department of Correction-Division of Community Corrections, has spurred to write about something I've been meaning to write about for a while: probation officer liability when a supervised offender hurts someone. In Blaylock, a probation officer was supervising a mentally ill probationer named James Oakes who had been identified as a "sexual offender." When Mr. Oakes didn't have a proper place to the live the officer made some calls to help him find accommodations. She called and eventually visited a pair of Oakes's relatives, a married couple with four children, to see if he could live with them. Despite seeing children in the home, the officer did not inform the couple of Oakes's history as a sexual offender. Two days after the couple agreed to let him move in, Oakes sexually assaulted two of their children. The couple sued the Division of Community Corrections (DCC) before the Industrial Commission (that's where you sue state agencies - which would otherwise be immune - under the State Tort Claims Act). They alleged that DCC's agent, the officer, failed to exercise reasonable care in placing Mr. Oakes in the couple's home. DCC raised the public duty doctrine as a defense. Under the public duty doctrine, individual citizens generally have no claim that government officers are obliged to protect them from harm caused by third parties. For example, you typically can't succeed in a lawsuit against the police department when you're the victim of a crime - [...]