State Supreme Court Revives Negligent Retention Claim Against Tacoma in 2016 Police Shooting of Puyallup Tribal Member

The Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the mother of a woman killed by Tacoma police in 2016 can sue the city for keeping an officer on the force after, she alleges, it learned of domestic violence allegations against him, even though the city concedes the officer was acting within the scope of his employment when her daughter was shot.

The unanimous decision in Earl v. Campbell reverses a 2025 ruling by the Court of Appeals in Tacoma and sends the case back to Pierce County Superior Court.

The court also overruled a line of Court of Appeals decisions to the extent they held or implied that a negligent retention claim cannot survive when an employee was acting within the scope of employment.

"Such a rule is unsupported by our cases," Justice Charles W. Johnson wrote for the court.

What the Case Is About

Jacqueline Salyers, a 32-year-old member of the Puyallup Tribe, was fatally shot by Tacoma Police Officer Scott Campbell in January 2016 while he and Officer Aaron Joseph were attempting to execute an arrest warrant for a passenger in her car. 

The Pierce County Prosecutor's Office later concluded the shooting was lawful under state law. 

Her mother, Lisa Earl, sued Campbell and the City of Tacoma individually, as personal representative of Salyers's estate and on behalf of other family members, including minor children. 

The suit originally alleged that Campbell was negligent and that the city was vicariously liable for his conduct as its employee.

Earl first filed in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alongside state tort claims. When the federal claim was dismissed on summary judgment, the state claim was dismissed without prejudice. Earl then pursued her claims in Pierce County Superior Court.

After discovery closed, Earl says she uncovered new evidence and developed a theory that Joseph's actions also contributed to her daughter's death. She also discovered prior domestic violence allegations against Joseph, which she asserts show the city knew several years before the shooting that he was unfit to serve as a police officer.

Earl moved to amend her complaint to add Joseph to the negligence and vicarious liability claims, and to add a new claim: that the city negligently retained Joseph because it knew about the allegations but kept him on the force.

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Shelly Speir granted the motion in July 2023 and reopened discovery. The city challenged that decision, and the trial court certified the question to the Court of Appeals, which reversed. 

The appeals court held that where an employer concedes its employees were acting within the scope of employment and the plaintiff brings a vicarious liability claim, the plaintiff cannot also bring a negligent retention claim against the same employer.

The Legal Question

The city argued that the two claims are "alternative and mutually exclusive theories of liability" resting on the same facts. 

Its reasoning was that vicarious liability requires an employee acting within the scope of employment, so a negligent retention claim must require an employee acting outside it.

The Supreme Court rejected that framing.

Vicarious liability, the court explained, makes an employer indirectly responsible for an employee's tort committed on the job, even if the employer itself did nothing wrong. 

Negligent retention is a direct claim against the employer for its own negligence in keeping an employee it knew, or should have known, was unfit.

"Liability under a negligent retention theory is analytically distinct from a vicarious liability theory," Johnson wrote. "Unlike vicarious liability, the scope of employment does not limit an employer's direct liability where the employer breaches its duty to protect others from foreseeable harm caused by its employees."

The court leaned on Civil Rule 8, which allows a plaintiff to plead "as many separate claims or defenses as the party has regardless of consistency," and on its 2019 decision in Beltran-Serrano v. City of Tacoma, another case in which Tacoma argued that an officer's intentional act of shooting a man could not support a negligence claim. The court rejected that argument then and did so again Thursday.

"The vicarious liability claim has no bearing on the viability of the negligent retention claim," Johnson wrote.

The court distinguished Niece v. Elmview Group Home, the 1997 case the Court of Appeals relied on. 

In Niece, the court had thrown out a negligent supervision claim as duplicative of a negligent protection claim, but both were direct liability theories arising from the same incident. Here, the court said, the vicarious liability claim concerns Joseph's actions at the time of the shooting, while the negligent retention claim concerns what the city allegedly failed to do years earlier.

"Where claims are analytically distinct and involve different negligent acts, they are not superfluous," Johnson wrote.

The court disavowed two Court of Appeals decisions, Hicks v. Klickitat County Sheriff's Office from 2022 and Evans v. Tacoma School District No. 10 from 2016, along with any others, "only to the extent they concluded or implied that negligent retention claims are nonviable when employees are acting within the scope of employment."

What the Court Did Not Decide

The opinion is narrow in an important respect. The case is at the pleading stage, and the court stressed that the factual record has not been developed.

The court found Earl's amended complaint sufficient to proceed because it alleges the city had information that Joseph was unfit for police work. Whether she can prove that is a question for the trial court. Proximate cause, the court noted in a footnote, was not before it.

The city had also argued that the new claim would "taint the trial proceedings with irrelevant and prejudicial allegations about expunged criminal charges" against Joseph. 

The court said allowing the claim to go forward does not override the rules of evidence or the trial judge's ability to instruct the jury, and that any such disputes belong on remand.

On the city's concern about double recovery, the court said a plaintiff can recover only once for the harm suffered, and that jury instructions, special verdict forms and post-trial motions are the tools for preventing duplicate damages. "The City's concern is unfounded at this stage," Johnson wrote.

Who Weighed In

The case drew a wide field of amicus briefs. Supporting Earl were the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, the Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice, the Northwest Center for Indigenous Law, the Seattle chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the Sexual Violence Law Center, the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault, the Washington State Association for Justice Foundation and Professor David B. Owens.

Supporting the city were the State of Washington, the Washington Cities Insurance Authority and the Washington Counties Risk Pool, the two risk pools that insure many cities and counties across the state.

The Washington State Association for Justice Foundation argued that allowing both claims is consistent with the state's comparative fault statute, RCW 4.22.070, which directs juries to apportion fault among every entity that caused the harm. 

The court agreed, noting that fault under a vicarious liability claim lies with the employee while fault under a negligent retention claim lies with the employer.

What Happens Next

The case returns to Pierce County Superior Court, where discovery on the negligent retention claim was reopened before the appeal. 

The city has not conceded that it negligently retained Joseph, and it remains free to contest the claim on the facts.