Background
Frederick Burney was stabbed repeatedly by Robert LeMasters at a Marysville hotel in February 2022. LeMasters was experiencing a mental health crisis and had recently been the subject of reports to law enforcement concerning threatening, harassing, and sexually graphic communications. On the day of the attack, LeMasters’s former wife told Snohomish County 911 that he was having a mental health problem, and LeMasters later called 911 claiming that armed people were holding him hostage.
Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies spoke with LeMasters’s former wife but did not go to the hotel or arrange a behavioral-health response. Lynnwood police officers later served LeMasters with citations for harassment and cyberstalking. About an hour afterward, LeMasters knocked on Burney’s hotel-room door and attacked him without provocation, causing serious and permanent injuries.
Burney sued Snohomish County, Snohomish County 911, and the City of Lynnwood for negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The superior court granted summary judgment to Snohomish County 911, entered judgments on the pleadings for the County and City, and denied Burney’s request for additional discovery before resolution of the summary-judgment motion.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that none of the respondents owed Burney an actionable duty of care. Snohomish County 911’s duties to notify, dispatch, support, and coordinate emergency responses arose from a county ordinance and were owed to the public generally. Because Burney did not argue that an exception to Washington’s public duty doctrine applied, his claims against Snohomish County 911 failed as a matter of law.
The court likewise held that the County and City neither formed a particularized relationship with Burney nor had a special relationship with LeMasters that made them responsible for controlling his conduct. Their alleged failures to deploy behavioral-health resources, conduct a welfare check, share information, or take further action were nonfeasance, not affirmative acts that created or exposed Burney to danger. Foreseeability alone could not establish a duty without the required relationship or affirmative creation of risk.
The court also upheld the denial of a CR 56(f) continuance. The proposed discovery concerning dispatch policies, call recordings, and the handling of LeMasters’s requests primarily addressed breach rather than whether Snohomish County 911 owed Burney a duty. Burney did not establish that the requested evidence would create a genuine factual dispute on the dispositive duty question under the theory he presented.
Key Takeaways
- A government agency’s ordinance-based emergency-response obligations generally run to the public at large unless a recognized exception to the public duty doctrine applies.
- When a third party causes the injury, a particularized relationship between the government and that third party is insufficient; liability requires a qualifying special relationship or an affirmative act that created the danger.
- Failures to investigate, dispatch behavioral-health resources, communicate information, or take further protective action are nonfeasance and do not independently create a common-law duty.
- Additional discovery will not justify a CR 56(f) continuance when it concerns breach but cannot create a material dispute over the threshold existence of a legal duty.
Why It Matters
The decision limits negligence claims against Washington emergency-dispatch and law-enforcement entities arising from their responses to behavioral-health crises. A plaintiff injured by a person in crisis cannot establish governmental liability merely by alleging an inadequate response or foreseeable violence; the plaintiff must identify an individualized duty under the public duty doctrine or a recognized common-law special relationship.
The opinion also distinguishes direct emergency-assistance cases from cases involving later harm by a third party. Government contact with or assistance to the third party does not, by itself, create a duty to an eventual victim.