02-28-2007 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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EXHIBIT A League of Minnesota Cities Cities pronlotivg excellence LMCIT Risk Management Information 145 University Avenue West, St. Paul, MN 55103 -2044 Phone: (651) 281 -1200 • (800) 925 -1122 Fax: (651) 281 -1298 • TDD (651) 281 -1290 www.lmcit.lmnc.org COVERING THE CITY'S VOLUNTEERS Cities in Minnesota use volunteers to help provide a wide variety of services. Firefighting, ambulance or first responder service, community recreation, "clean -up days," senior citizen programs, community celebrations, and traffic control are only a few of the services which volunteers commonly perform for cities. Occasionally cities ask who's liable if a city volunteer is injured, injures someone else, or damages someone else's property. Well try to sort these questions out in this memo. It's important to keep in mind that we're talking here about city volunteers. Not every volunteer performing a community service is a city volunteer. Individuals often volunteer their services in connection with a project sponsored by a private organization they belong to. Other units of government may sponsor volunteer programs; Mn /DoT's "Adopt -a- Highway" program is an example. Sometimes individuals simply perform community services on their own, without being sponsored or requested to do so by the city or anyone else. When we talk in this memo about city volunteers, were talking about individuals who are performin • services as part of a city function and under the city's direction and supervision. What happens if a city volunteer injures someone else or damages someone's property? City volunteers are protected against tort liability in the same way as the city's officers and paid employees are. This is the result of a 1988 amendment which brought city volunteers under the municipal tort liability act, Chapter 466 of the statutes. Statutory protections The tort liability act protects the volunteer two important ways: • First, the statute limits the volunteer's maximum liability to $300,000 per claimant and $1,000,000 per occurrence. • Second, it requires the city to defend and indemnify its volunteers against claims for damages when the volunteer was acting in the performance of his or her duties as a city volunteer. This latter provision provides an extremely valuable and important protection to the volunteer. In effect, it means that when a person is acting in the performance of his or her duties as a city volunteer, the risk of tort liability is on the city not on the individual volunteer. The only