# Campbell v. City of Bellevue

> Washington Supreme Court · January 9, 1975 · 85 Wash. 2d 1

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9791346

## Case

- **Full name:** Robert Douglas Campbell, as Executor, Respondent v. the City of Bellevue, Appellant; Robert Douglas Campbell, as Executor, Respondent, v. Richard Saunders, Petitioner
- **Court:** Washington Supreme Court
- **Decided:** January 9, 1975
- **Citations:** 85 Wash. 2d 1; 530 P.2d 234; 1975 Wash. LEXIS 844
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Stafford
- **Judges:** Hamilton, Wright, Stafford, Hale, Finley, Rosellini, Hunter, Utter, Brachtenbach
- **Cited by:** 81 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/9791346

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding governmental agents responsible for enforcing statutory requirements when they possess actual knowledge of a statutory violation, fail to take corrective action despite a statutory duty to do so, and the plaintiff is within the class the statute intended to protect
- describing the “duty to all, duty to no-one” doctrine as a form of sovereign immunity
- noting both explicit and implicit exceptions to the general rule that statutory duties are owed to the public as a whole

## Opinion text

Stafford, J.
(concurring specially in the dissent) — I concur with that portion of the dissent which questions the advisability of holding a city liable for inaction of its employees under the facts herein.
Under the attendant circumstances disconnection of the offending electrical system, without the required notice, would have amounted to a trespass by the city employees. How such can rise to the dignity of a duty to act, on the part of a city, is difficult to accept.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9791346. Public record. Not legal advice.