Written by: Mary Dvorak
As the result of a compromise bill that took effect on August 1,2024, Minnesota’s guardians no longer enjoy blanket immunity from lawsuits. In March of 2024, the Minnesota legislature passed a bill allowing lawsuits against guardians when “acts or omissions that result in harm to the person subject to guardianship . . . constitute reckless or willful misconduct, or gross negligence.” However, guardians will retain qualified immunity for acts or omissions that do not meet this high legal bar of recklessness, willful misconduct, or gross negligence.
Guardianship is a legal arrangement in which a person–a guardian–makes decisions for another person that the courts have found to be incapable of making their own decisions. The persons under guardianship are considered to be legally incapacitated. Guardianships can involve younger persons who are unable to assume the responsibilities of adulthood upon turning 18. However, an increasing number of guardianships are initiated for elderly persons with dementia. Guardians can be friends or family members, or they can be corporate professional guardians. Most guardianships are plenary, meaning that the guardian has the authority to make all decisions for an incapacitated person. Because courts give guardians broad authority, incapacitated persons can be vulnerable to abuse or neglect.
The 2022 case of Zika v. Elder Care of Minnesota involved alleged extreme neglect by a guardian and sparked the Minnesota legislature’s interest in removing blanket immunity. A longtime friend of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease was appointed as the woman’s guardian. The guardian placed the woman in a nursing home, but failed to communicate with family members about the woman’s condition. The woman was sexually assaulted in the nursing home and died four months after the crime from unrelated causes. The guardian did not provide trauma-related services to the woman during the four months prior to the woman’s death.
The family learned of the sexual assault after the death, and the woman’s brother, as representative of the estate, brought a negligence suit against the guardian. The family said that they would have removed the woman from the nursing home and obtained follow up care for her if they had been informed of the assault. The district court ruled that the Minnesota statute granted immunity from liability to guardians of incapacitated persons, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision. The Court of Appeals ruled that the plain meaning of the Minnesota statute protected guardians from civil liability. At the time, the statute said that a private “guardian shall have no personal or monetary liability” for a breach of duty to “provide for the care, comfort, and maintenance needs” of an incapacitated person.
The Minnesota bill that removed blanket immunity was the subject of much debate in committee. On one side of the debate were professional guardianship organizations, attorneys who represent guardians, and a long-term care facility with residents under guardianship. On the other side were public interest lawyers, nonprofit organizations, and persons who alleged that private professional guardians had mistreated family members. The original draft of the bill allowed suits for “breach [of] a fiduciary duty recognized elsewhere in law.” However, a compromise bill eliminated suits for negligence that stopped short of gross negligence. In written testimony, one attorney who represents guardians said that “[a] reasonable person standard is not fair.” He was referring to the common law (judge-made law) standard that defines a negligent act as a failure to act as a reasonable person would under the circumstances that gave rise to the lawsuit. Because the determination of whether someone acted as a reasonable person rests with a judge or jury, the attorney viewed requiring guardians to pay legal fees to defend their actions in court to be inherently unfair.
Other testimony indicated that multiple professional guardians would stop taking new cases if the right to sue professional guardians were expanded. Organizations that supported restrictions on immunity yielded to the political reality that a bill allowing lawsuits for all breaches of fiduciary duties might not survive a vote in the legislature. Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid wrote in support of the original draft and mentioned the right to sue for breach of fiduciary duty. A later statement from Legal Aid maintained support for the revised bill but did not mention the deletion of the provision regarding fiduciary duties. Testimony by Elder Voice Advocates before the Minnesota House Human Services Policy Committee acknowledged that the bill “balance[d] competing interests and offer[ed] a viable compromise.”
Minnesota’s new law granting qualified immunity to guardians of incapacitated persons mirrors laws in multiple other states. Idaho, for example, grants immunity to “community” guardianship boards that fulfill the role of a public guardian, as long as they do not act in a “wanton or grossly negligent” manner. Pennsylvania provides nonprofit corporations with immunity from liability “in the absence of gross negligence, recklessness, or intentional misconduct.” In the coming years, immunity for guardians will likely continue to ignite debate and force legislative compromise.
Sources:
20 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5521(g) (2024).
H.F. 3483, 93d Leg., Reg. Sess. (Minn. 2024).
House Human Services Policy Committee Hearing on H.F. 3483, 93d Leg., Reg. Sess. (Minn. 2024).
House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee Hearing on H.F. 3483, 93d Leg., Reg. Sess. (Minn. 2024).
House State and Local Government Finance and Policy Hearing on H.F. 3483, 93d Leg., Reg. Sess. (Minn. 2024).
Idaho Code § 15-5-602(g) (2024).
Jessie Van Berkel, Minnesota Re-examines Guardianships: ‘They Took Away Her Rights’, Minn. Star Trib. (Aug. 24, 2024, 11:23 AM).
Minn. Stat. § 524.5-313(c)(2) (2020).
Minn. Stat. § 524.5-315(c) (2024).
S.F. 3438, 93d Leg., Reg. Sess. (Minn. 2024).
Zika v. Elder Care of Minn., 979 N.W.2d 472 (Minn. Ct. App. 2022).