A jail employee’s civil claims arising from a sexual assault by an inmate should have been dismissed, a Texas appellate court ruled.
As documented in Harris County v. Doe, a female Harris County Jail employee, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, alleged that she was sexually assaulted by an inmate in December 2021. The woman claims she screamed and cried for help, but that no one came because of understaffing at the jail.
The victim sued the inmate, the county and various individual county officials in their official capacities, contending that the county defendants’ “continued intentional refusal to adequately fund and/or staff the jail continues to occur even though they have actual knowledge of the well-known and blatantly dangerous conditions” in the jail. She said she was “forced to work in escalating levels of dangerous conditions.”
The county defendants argued that the Division of Workers’ Compensation has exclusive jurisdiction over the dispute, that there was no waiver of their immunity under the Texas Tort Claims Act and that the tort act’s election-of-remedies provision barred the action. A trial judge denied the plea.
The Court of Appeals for the 1st District of Texas reversed, ruling Thursday that state tort law provides a limited waiver of immunity for certain claims against the government.
“The filing of a suit under the TTCA against a governmental unit constitutes an irrevocable election by the plaintiff and immediately and forever bars any suit or recovery by the plaintiff against any individual employee of the governmental unit regarding the same subject matter,” the court said.
Because Doe sued individual county employees in their official capacities, the claims against them should have been dismissed, the court said. The court also said the claims against the county should have been dismissed because Doe failed to allege facts establishing a waiver of immunity under the TTCA.
The ruling also said that because the issues on tort law called for a dismissal, “we need not consider appellants’ remaining issues” over workers compensation exclusive remedy.
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