Dianne Standard brought suit against a McDuffie County sheriff’s deputy to recover damages for personal injuries she and her daughter sustained as a result of a collision between the car she was driving and a car driven by Clinton Hoyt Braswell. At the time of the collision, the deputy was pursuing Braswell at high speeds.1 The trial court granted summary judgment to the officer, Michael Hobbs, finding that Hobbs’s actions were discretionary rather than ministerial, that the county’s waiver of sovereign immunity through the purchase of insurance for its vehicles did not apply here, and that proximate cause had not been shown because Standard had not established that the officer acted with reckless disregard for her safety. Standard challenges all three findings. We agree with Standard that the trial court erred in finding that the county’s waiver of sovereign immunity did not apply in this case. But because the trial court correctly found that Hobbs’s actions were discretionary and that Standard did not show that Hobbs acted with reckless disregard, we affirm the grant of summary judgment to Hobbs. Construed in the light most favorable to Standard as the respondent on the motion for summary judgment, the evidence in the record shows that Braswell was wanted for several armed robberies in Richmond County and was believed to be armed and dangerous. Law enforcement officers from various jurisdictions were involved in the pursuit of Braswell. Jefferson County Investigator Robert Chalker, who was in an unmarked car, first spotted Braswell’s car and began following it on Interstate 20. Hobbs was notified about Braswell by his dispatcher, and after Braswell exited the Interstate onto Highway 17, Hobbs fell in directly behind Braswell’s car, and GBI Special Agent David Rush began following Chalker to assist. When Braswell’s car reached a section of road with wide shoulders, Hobbs “thought that would be a good place to try to get him pulled over.” He notified the dispatcher and activated the blue lights on his patrol car, but Braswell kept going. At that point, “the traffic was real thick” and Braswell “wasn’t running. He just wasn’t pulling over.” But when Braswell turned onto Highway 43 with the officers in pursuit, the traffic became lighter. The road was not “very heavily traveled,” and Braswell “started speeding as though he were trying to run away.” McDuffie County Sheriff Logan Marshall monitored the pursuit over the radio and spoke to Hobbs several times, and a State Patrol helicopter was dispatched to monitor the pursuit and advise the officers on the ground. The pilot spotted only one other car on the road during the pursuit.
Braswell was driving at very high speeds, and the officers were attempting to keep up with him. Agent Rush estimated that at times he was “running probably 120.” In the interest of safety, the officers slowed at intersections and stop signs even though Braswell did not, causing them to lose ground at times. Adding difficulty to the pursuit, the road they were traveling on was “just super crooked. It goes around and crooks around, and is just as crooked as a snake’s back.” The officers had their lights on and their sirens blaring to warn the public of the danger. During the chase, officers made attempts to stop Braswell in various ways, without success. When Hobbs noted that Braswell had blown his right front tire and “was on the rim on the right front,” he felt that they were “getting close to the end now.”
