Public policy
The Court is persuaded that public policy does not support imposition of a duty on the State to protect Plaintiffs’ property from wildfires … “The decisions of how to properly fight a particular fire, how to rescue victims in a fire, or what and how much equipment to send to a fire, are discretionary judgmental decisions which are inherent in this public safety function of fire protection.”
And being ‘discretionary judgmental decisions’ for the executive arm of government, they are not subject to review or second-guessing by the judicial arm.
‘Abnormally dangerous doctrine’
The plaintiffs relied on this doctrine. As an Australian lawyer I’m not quite sure what this is but I would infer that it’s like the old rule described here as ‘the rule in Rylands v Fletcher’ (referring to Rylands v Fletcher (1868) LR 3 HL 330). That rule imposed strict liability (that is liability without proof of negligence) if a defendant brought something dangerous onto his or her land and it escaped. I would infer that the ‘abnormally dangerous doctrine’ says that if you are engaged in some abnormally dangerous activity you are liable for any harm caused, regardless of the care taken to avoid that harm. Following the decision in Burnie Port Authority v General Jones (1994) 179 CLR 520, which said that the rule in Rylands v Fletcher is no longer law in Australia, that doctrine probably does not apply here, if it ever did.
Regardless of the doctrine’s application in Australia, Judge Gama ruled it had no application in this case as the defendant was not engaged in an abnormally dangerous activity. The state was engaged in the activity of firefighting and it was the fire that caused the damage to the plaintiffs so even if firefighting is an abnormally dangerous activity, it is not what caused the plaintiffs’ losses and the doctrine could have no application.