The Supreme Court of Minnesota held on June 20, 2024, that a state Department of Corrections (DOC) prisoner plausibly stated a claim under the Minnesota Tort Claims Act (TCA) when he alleged that a guard sexually harassed and assaulted him.

Nicholas Sterry filed a civil TCA claim in March 2021, seeking to hold the DOC liable for damages over a series of incidents at Moose Lake Correctional Facility. When he was held there and worked in the prison kitchen in early 2018, Sterry said that guard Ashley Youngberg made sexually suggestive comments and gestures toward him over the course of several months before she ordered him into a prison kitchen supply room to conduct inventory and fondled him.

Youngberg allegedly had a history of sexually harassing and intimidating prisoners, and the DOC was allegedly aware but had not disciplined her. On a near-daily basis from February to May 2018, she directed sexually suggestive faces and poses toward Sterry, he said, telling him that it would be fun for him to be with her, and making comments such as “[y]ou’re cute,” “[y]ou’re sexy,” and “I bet you look good.”

In late April 2018, while Youngberg was supervising Sterry in the kitchen, she ordered him into the supply closest, where she stuck her hand down the front of Sterry’s pants and fondled his penis. Sterry said he was unsure whether this was an unauthorized search or a sexual assault, but he decided to step back and told Youngberg he did not want to have sex with her. Youngberg said that if Sterry told anyone about the incident, she would claim attempted rape.

After Sterry filed his claim for battery, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligence and negligence per se, the district court of dismissed the case, holding that the DOC was immune from liability under the TCA. The Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed, finding that Sterry alleged facts sufficient to conclude that Youngberg acted within the scope of her employment when she assaulted him, which permitted a finding of vicarious liability against the DOC. See: Sterry v. Minn. Dep’t of Corr., 986 N.W.2d 715 (Minn. App. 2023).

The DOC successfully sought discretionary review from the Minnesota Supreme Court, which affirmed the Court of Appeals in a unanimous opinion. Under the TCA, the Court recalled, the State or one of its agencies may be held liable for acts or omissions of an employee because Minn. Stat. § 3.736, subd. 1 (2022) read: “The state will pay compensation for injury to or loss of property or personal injury or death caused by an act or omission of an employee of the state while acting within the scope of office or employment . . . under circumstances where the state, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant, whether arising out of a governmental or proprietary function.”

The Court found the DOC liable for Youngberg’s tortious conduct against Sterry under this statute for several reasons. First, because she was working as a guard with direct supervisory authority over Sterry when she sexually assaulted him, Youngberg was acting within the scope of her DOC employment, a prerequisite to the DOC’s liability under the TCA. But the DOC argued that “scope of employment” should not be interpreted to include a state employee’s tortious conduct because such behavior is never part of an employee’s job description. The Court rejected this narrow interpretation of the TCA.

Instead, the Court said that the State and its agencies are vicariously liable for tortious conduct of employees on the same basis as a private employer under common law. Applying this principle to the TCA, the Court explained, “means that for state employer liability to attach—consistent with the common law of vicarious liability—an employee’s intentional tort must (1) be related to the duties of the employee; and (2) occur within work-related limits of time and place.” (cleaned up).

Second, Sterry’s complaint was sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss, the Court said, because Minnesota’s notice pleading standard “does not require that every fact related to every element of a cause of action be pleaded, but rather that a complaint give the adverse party sufficient clarity of the pleader’s theory,” as held in Halva v. Minn. State Colls. & Univs., 953 N.W.2d 496 (Minn. 2021). Although acknowledging that Sterry’s complaint “could have been more straightforward in how its facts correlated to the claims made within, or it could have used language from the [TCA] itself to clarify his theory[,]” it was sufficient under this standard, the Court decided.

Sterry alleged that Youngberg sexually assaulted him while “performing duties or tasks that she had presumably been assigned by her supervisor[.]” The Court noted that it previously held that “when an employee commits a sexual assault within work-related limits of time and place, an employer’s vicarious liability turns on ‘a question of fact whether the employee’s acts were foreseeable, related to, and connected with acts otherwise within the scope of his employment,’ such that the assault was related to the duties of employment,” quoting Fahrendorff by & Through Fahrendorff v. N. Homes, 597 N.W.2d 905 (Minn. 1999). Because this common law standard also applies under the TCA, Sterry’s complaint alleged facts sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

Accordingly, the Court of Appeals’ decision was affirmed, the district court’s dismissal of Sterry’s complaint was reversed, and the case was remanded. Before the Court, Sterry was represented by Minneapolis attorney Zorislav R. Leyderman. See: Sterry v. Minn. Dep’t of Corr., 8 N.W.3d 224 (Minn. 2024).  

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