Good example of how municipalities are going to be exposed to liability, and how does the ADT case in MN tie in?

Marlboro NJ is perhaps the latest but not only municipality who has announced its plans to compete with the alarm monitoring business.  What a great revenue raising idea !!  The 911 operators are there 24/7 anyway and the cops can claim that the "customers" can save time because they can now by pass the central station and communicate directly with the police operator [whether that will be the 911 operator or some other police or civilian personnel may vary town to town].  Marlboro NJ figures $22 is nice competitive price to charge.  That should be just enough to knock the local alarm dealers out of the box as well as the wholesale central stations who monitor those accounts.  As I opine in my prior article, the cops' plan is ill conceived and simply not well thought out.

    Today I read that a husband's wife was abducted from her home and murdered.  He claims that the Charlotte County, Florida 911 dispatchers mishandled the 911 call for help by failing to timely dispatch the call to the patrol officers.  He is suing for $200,000.  Because of the law of sovereign immunity and furtherance of police powers his lawsuit is going to be a tough up hill battle.

    But, what if the police were also monitoring the alarm system.  What if it was a panic button signal; burglary signal; and it got mishandled?  I don't think the police power defense is going to hold up.  I don't think the cops are going to have an alarm contract - none have purchased a contract from me - [and by the way, my contracts are available only to the alarm industry].  So what happens is that a lawsuit claiming negligence is going to make it to a jury.  Police, perhaps unlike alarm companies using my contracts, are going to be held accountable for their failure to properly discharge their duty to respond to the "alarm" condition.  Should be interesting to see how this plays out.

    The ADT case in MN adds additional concern.  In the ADT murder case the Federal Court, applying Minnesota law, found that if ADT is found liable at all then it could be held liable for all of the damages.  That's what joint and several liability means.  So if an alarm company is found to be 2% liable, say for delaying a response, it could be exposed to 100 percent of the damages. If the other tortfeasors - those responsible for the loss - have no money then the deep pocket alarm company foots the entire damage bill.  That would apply in property damage, personal injury and now even cases where some criminal is known to have committed the deed and caused the loss.