The city doesn’t always pay

Reader Bob Woolley of St. Paul, Minn. calls our attention to Durdahl v. City of Hastings, a Minnesota Court of Appeals decision filed May 17, which he summarizes as follows: The plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven at excessive speeds by a drunk driver. The driver lost control and skidded into a parked […]

Reader Bob Woolley of St. Paul, Minn. calls our attention to Durdahl v. City of Hastings, a Minnesota Court of Appeals decision filed May 17, which he summarizes as follows:

The plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven at excessive speeds by a drunk driver. The driver lost control and skidded into a parked semi-truck. The driver and one passenger were killed; two passengers survived with injuries. The case is one of those passengers suing the *city* for having granted a construction company permission to park its truck on the side of the road at a construction site. The city had done this because the site was too muddy for the truck to enter, and the volume of material to be loaded and unloaded made it impractical for the truck to park farther away. Obviously, that makes it the city’s fault that this woman’s driver was drunk and trying to take a 30 mph curve at 83 mph, right?

Fortunately, the court of appeals affirmed the sensible decision of the trial court, which was to dismiss the case.

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