Tort Liability
Traffic Signal Tort Liability 101
A well-documented Traffic Signal maintenance program forms an excellent shield against lawsuits that are brought against your agency following a vehicular accident. The personal injury lawyers that advertise on the back cover of every phone book are very eager to tell an injured person how they will recover vast sums of money from the negligent signal owner. When they investigate the accident, they are looking for evidence that can prove the agency has committed a tort of negligence in the maintenance of their traffic signals.
What is a tort?
If someone went up into the traffic signal heads and mis-wired the signal head to show green signals when they are programmed to show red, that would not be a tort, that would be a criminal act. A tort is a non-criminal action (or omission) which caused damages to be suffered by someone. Negligent maintenance of a traffic signal is a tort. This is what the lawyers are looking for.
For a Tort to exist, 5 conditions have to be met.
The following explanations are in reference to any agency charged with negligence in the responsibility of operating and maintaining traffic signals.
1. Duty: The duty to provide a safe traffic control system for the public has already been established.
2. Breach of Duty: Negligence is the Breach of Duty that will almost always be pitched by the lawyer. Negligence is the failure to use “reasonable” care in one’s actions. A healthy file of PM records that show a pattern of regular maintenance can disprove the Breach of Duty. This is how you win.
3. Damages: The plaintiff has to have incurred property damage, personal injury or both. Injury can include psychological trauma and related effects.
4. Proximate Cause: The plaintiff’s damage has a cause. The lawyer will try to show that the underlying cause is the Breach of Duty, in whole or in part.
5. Lack of Contributory Negligence: The lawyer will try to prove the plaintiff was not (or not very) negligent with regard to the incident. Laws on this issue vary from state to state, but contributory negligence works against the plaintiff.
What is NOT a tort?
Assume the non-negligent agency has been faithfully testing their conflict monitors every 12 months, but one monitor happens to fail and allows a conflict to exist long enough for an accident to take place. The failure of a device that is not due to any kind of neglect or misuse by the agency is not a tort, it is considered to be a random event.
However, if the failed monitor condition had persisted for a long period without any response from the agency, then there would be a failure to respond in a reasonable manner to the failure, which is also considered a negligence tort.
It must be noted that the author is not a lawyer, and these explanations are an opinion, not a legal definition. If you need further explanation, consult with a lawyer. This information is meant to provide enough information so you can ask the right questions of your legal advisor.