Minnesota Should Compensate Victims of I-35 Bridge Collapse

The following was written by Fred Pritzker, a Minnesota personal injury attorney with offices in Minneapolis. Although the victims of the tragic collapse of the I-35 bridge may have no legal claim to compensation from the State of Minnesota, Fred Pritzker calls on the state to pass a law to fairly compensate them.

It will take months to determine the cause of the I-35 Bridge collapse and even longer, if ever, to determine who bears responsibility for it. What is less clear, however, is whether the victims of this calamity will ever find justice for the physical, emotional, and financial losses they suffer as a result it.

This bridge should never have collapsed. No amount of finger-pointing and hand-wringing can ever explain or justify it; the bridge should not have collapsed. Despite that, under current law the victims of this tragedy may not be compensated for their horrific injuries or the deaths of their loved ones.

That’s because Minnesota law is incredibly forgiving of mistakes made by government officials.

Until the middle part of the last century – about the time the bridge was constructed – Minnesota citizens had no right to sue their state government. That was the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity – the king can do no wrong, an obvious Anglo-American throwback that was struck down by the courts only after the legislature failed repeatedly to abolish it.

Despite the demise of the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity, state coffers were not opened to hapless victims of government neglect. Instead, over the decades since the doctrine was overruled, various statutes and court decisions all but eviscerated any rights of redress the abolition of sovereign immunity finally allowed.

These new doctrines are called immunities, a fancy term that essentially means that even if mistakes are made, the government doesn’t have to pay for them. With names like “discretionary immunity” and “official immunity”, the law has “evolved” to such a point that ordinary citizens hurt or killed by government neglect are powerless to obtain compensation for their losses.

With regard to the victims of the I-35 tragedy, under current law they may have no right to justice and fair compensation. The courts may conclude that officials used their discretion in deciding not to repair the bridge; that they had to weigh alternatives and allocate resources – decisions that cannot be judged after the fact by a co-equal branch of the government. In short, the state is immune and the victims are left holding the bag.

The I-35 Bridge will be replaced. The funding for the replacement will largely come from the federal government. The officials who made the mistakes will never be punished or penalized. Only the victims are being held to account for their losses. And that’s not right.

The governor, who was loathe to call a special session and has consistently resisted raising taxes to pay for the infrastructure improvements this disaster highlights, should immediately call the legislature back into session to pass a law that fairly compensates the victims of this catastrophe. Precedent for this humane action is the federal government’s creation of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 that guaranteed reasonable sums to victims of that tragedy.

It should also be remembered that trial lawyers volunteered their time and expertise, with no compensation whatsoever, in representing victims seeking compensation from the 9/11 fund. Minnesota lawyers will do the same.

The victims of this I-35 Bridge collapse are suffering now. Our state government failed to prevent their suffering. The least it can do is compensation them for it.

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