photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

The Kansas Judicial Center, 301 SW 10th Ave. in Topeka, is pictured on Dec. 18, 2023.

The Kansas Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision released Friday, overturned two lower courts who ruled against a Topeka man who had sued the city over a pothole.

Troy Alan Martin sued the City of Topeka for failing to keep its streets reasonably safe for travel. He claimed he was ejected from his car and injured after hitting a pothole on Southwest Topeka Boulevard.

The Shawnee County District Court dismissed the case before it reached a jury, and a Court of Appeals panel agreed with that decision. Both lower courts relied on a legal rule called the public-duty doctrine, which generally shields governments from negligence lawsuits over how well they perform services for the public at large.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice K.J. Wall, reversed the lower courts and remanded the case for further proceedings. The high court ruled that the public-duty doctrine didn’t apply because, under Kansas case law dating back to early statehood, once a city opens a street for public use, it takes on a specific duty to keep the street reasonably safe for the people who use it.

Whether the city breached that duty turns on disputed facts in the Martin case — including whether the city knew or should have known about the pothole. The parties offered conflicting evidence on those points.

Those same disputed facts also affect whether the city is separately protected from liability under the Kansas Tort Claims Act. While that law protects governments when they make genuinely discretionary decisions, governments have no discretion to ignore road hazards they knew or should have known about. The justices determined that the trial court erred in not letting Martin’s lawsuit proceed.