Tuffy's, Inc. v. City of Oklahoma City

On January 20th, the City of Oklahoma City lost an important case before the Oklahoma Supreme Court: Tuffy's, Inc. v. City of Oklahoma City, 2009 OK 4, ___ P.3d ___. In Tuffy's, the Court refused to exempt municipalities from liability for the negligent actions of police officers that are committed within the scope of their employment. As the Court recognized, such claims must be brought under the Governmental Tort Claims Act; and, a specific exemption is provided there for loss that occurs from "enforcement of . . . a law . . .". The specific holding in Tuffy's was that this exemption did not apply there. More critically, however, the Court did not offer any guidance or analysis on how the facts in Tuffy's did not fall within this GTCA exemption. In Tuffy's, the plaintiff was nightclub; and, the nightclub alleged that police officers ". . . physically and verbally attacked, harassed, and assaulted numerous customers (and) used mace on customers and ordered their dogs to bite customers inside the building . . .". The Court's opinion did not provide any additional facts to explain why or the reason the police officers were in the nightclub and/or what criminal activity allegedly had occurred. Significantly, the Court did not suggest or infer that these facts would be important to whether the GTCA exemption for law enforcement activities would be upheld in this kind of case. The only guidance offered by the Court was that a municipality would not be liable if it was alleged that the police officers had acted with "bad faith". The Court held that the case could move forward because the allegations there were limited to the claim that "police officers breached a duty by negligently removing customers from the nightclub, which was the proximate cause of financial injury . . .". The Court further held that the relevant questions of fact for trial would be whether the police officers were, in fact, "negligent when removing customers from the nightclub and, if so, whether the officers were acting within the scope of their employment."