## Facts

- Imperial Foods operated a chicken-processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, for approximately 11 years before a fatal fire.
- Over that period, the North Carolina Department of Labor (NCDOL) did not conduct workplace safety inspections at the plant; an inspection occurred only after the fire.
- The fire caused multiple deaths and injuries to workers.
- Post-fire inspection identified extensive safety violations, including blocked or inaccessible exits and inadequate fire-suppression measures.
- NCDOL issued 83 citations for violations of workplace safety requirements.
- Injured workers and representatives of deceased workers sued NCDOL under the North Carolina Tort Claims Act, alleging negligent failure to inspect and enforce safety laws and alleging that proper inspections would have prevented the harm.

## Issues

1. Whether NCDOL may be held liable in damages under the North Carolina Tort Claims Act for allegedly failing to inspect a private workplace and enforce occupational safety requirements.
2. Whether NCDOL’s inspection and enforcement responsibilities create a tort duty owed to individual workers (as opposed to a duty owed to the public generally).
3. Whether sovereign immunity is waived for claims based on alleged noninspection and nonenforcement of regulatory statutes.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed the Court of Appeals.
- The court held NCDOL was not liable in damages to plaintiffs for alleged failure to inspect and enforce workplace safety laws at the plant.
- The court directed dismissal of the claims against NCDOL.

## Legal Principles

- Under sovereign immunity, the State and its agencies are immune from suit unless immunity is waived by statute.
- The North Carolina Tort Claims Act waives immunity only to the extent the State would be liable “as a private person” for negligence; it does not create liability for uniquely governmental regulatory enforcement functions lacking a private-law analog.
- Under the public duty doctrine, governmental duties to enforce regulatory or police-power statutes are generally duties owed to the public at large, not to specific individuals.
- Absent a “special duty” to particular persons (such as a specific undertaking or promise inducing justifiable reliance), an individual cannot recover in tort for governmental failure to inspect or enforce regulatory requirements.
- Decisions about whether, when, and how to inspect or enforce are discretionary governmental functions; courts avoid converting enforcement programs into broad tort compensation for harms caused by regulated entities.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that NCDOL’s workplace-safety inspection and enforcement responsibilities are public duties and that the Tort Claims Act does not waive sovereign immunity for claims premised on alleged regulatory noninspection and nonenforcement, requiring dismissal of the workers’ negligence claims against the agency.


Stone v. N.C. Dep’t of Lab., 347 N.C. 473, 495 S.E.2d 711 (1998)