# The-Anh Nguyen v. City of Seattle

> Court of Appeals of Washington · January 27, 2014 · 179 Wash. App. 155

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4762603

## Case

- **Full name:** The-Anh Nguyen v. The City of Seattle
- **Court:** Court of Appeals of Washington
- **Decided:** January 27, 2014
- **Citations:** 179 Wash. App. 155; 317 P.3d 518
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Grosse
- **Judges:** Dwyer, Grosse, Lau
- **Cited by:** 64 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4762603

## Opinion text

Grosse, J.
¶31 (concurring) I concur in the result and agree that the evidence here is insufficient to establish the city of Seattle’s negligence. But I disagree with the majority’s analytical approach, which incorrectly imposes a notice requirement to establish a negligence claim against a government entity. As the Supreme Court has recently reiterated, “governmental entities . . . are liable for their ‘tortious conduct’ to the ‘same extent’ as ‘a private person or *174 corporation.’ ” 18 “Consequently, a plaintiff claiming that a municipality has acted negligently may recover after proving ‘the existence of a duty, a breach thereof, a resulting injury, and proximate causation between the breach and the resulting injury.’ ” 19 Notice is not an element of such a claim.
¶32 While foreseeability is a component of the duty analysis, 20 “ ‘the pertinent inquiry is not whether the actual harm was of a particular kind which was expectable. Rather, the question is whether the actual harm fell within a general field of danger which should have been anticipated.’ ” 21 Simply put, the focus remains on establishing the government’s duty and a breach thereof, not on whether the governmental entity had notice of the danger. And it may well be that with modern advances and technology, municipalities may more easily anticipate such a general field of danger.
Washburn v. City of Federal Way, 178 Wn.2d 732, 753 , 310 P.3d 1275 (2013) (quoting RCW 4.92.090; ROW 4.96.010).
Washburn, 178 Wn.2d at 753 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Michaels v. CH2M Hill, Inc., 171 Wn.2d 587, 605 , 257 P.3d 532 (2011)).
“[T]he existence of a duty turns on the foreseeability of the risk created. If a risk is foreseeable, an individual generally has a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent it. If a risk is not foreseeable, an actor generally has no duty to prevent it .’’Parrilla v. King County, 138 Wn. App. 427, 436 , 157 P.3d 879 (2007) (citations omitted).
Rikstad v. Holmberg, 76 Wn.2d 265, 269 , 456 P.2d 355 (1969) (quoting McLeod v. Grant County Sch. Dist. No. 128, 42 Wn.2d 316, 321 , 255 P.2d 360 (1953)).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/4762603. Public record. Not legal advice.