Case ID: ohio-law-abs_6/html/0368-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "KINKADE, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

SPITZIG v. STATE ex Hile
    Ohio Supreme Court.
    No. 20971
    Decided June 6 1928.
    Error to Cuyahoga Appeals.
    Judgment reversed.
    291. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW — 915 Personal Injury — 1104 Statutes.
    Legislature may, by special act, authorize county commissioners to pay compensation for injury, inflicted by State, where the duty to pay rests upon moral obligation only.
   KINKADE, J.

Where the state inflicts an injury upon an individual, for the reparation of which no law exists, and the facts incident thereto are not in dispute, and the Legislature finds that a moral obligation rests upon the state to compensate the injured party for the damages sustained, the Legislature has full authority to provide, by special enactment, for the appropriation of public money to meet such moral obligation; and where the county is the active agent in causing the injury, a spe-ciál act may confer on the board of county commissioners the power to pay such compensation from the general funds of the county. Such special enactments of the Legislature do not contravene any of the provisions of either the state or federal Constitution.

Marshall, CJ., Day, Allen, Robinson, Jones, and Matthias, JJ. concur.