Case Name: Ronald Eugene JAHNKE, a Minor Child, by his Father and Next Friend, Frank Jahnke, and Frank Jahnke, Appellants, v. The INCORPORATED CITY OF DES MOINES, Iowa, Appellee
Court: Iowa Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Iowa
Decision Date: 1971-11-11
Citations: 191 N.W.2d 780
Docket Number: No. 54586
Parties: Ronald Eugene JAHNKE, a Minor Child, by his Father and Next Friend, Frank Jahnke, and Frank Jahnke, Appellants, v. The INCORPORATED CITY OF DES MOINES, Iowa, Appellee.
Judges: MOORE, C. J., and MASON, RAWL-INGS and REES, JJ., concur.
Reporter: North Western Reporter 2d
Volume: 191
Pages: 780–797

Head Matter:
Ronald Eugene JAHNKE, a Minor Child, by his Father and Next Friend, Frank Jahnke, and Frank Jahnke, Appellants, v. The INCORPORATED CITY OF DES MOINES, Iowa, Appellee.
No. 54586.
Supreme Court of Iowa.
Nov. 11, 1971.
Virgil Moore, Des Moines, for appellants.
Jack L. Briggs, Des Moines, for appel-lee.

Opinion:
LeGRAND, Justice.
This action seeks recovery for personal injuries sustained by Ronald Eugene Jahnke, a minor child, and for medical expense incurred on his behalf by his father, Frank Jahnke, allegedly caused by the negligence of defendant city in failing to properly protect said minor from the riotous conduct of a large and unlawful assemblage of citizens in the city of Des Moines on or about June 26, 1970. We refer to the minor as the sole plaintiff.
This appeal reaches us on a challenge to the trial court's order dismissing plaintiff's petition for failure to state a cause of action upon which any relief could be granted. In testing the sufficiency of the petition, we accept the allegations thereof as true. Hagenson v. United Telephone Company (Iowa 1969), 164 N.W.2d 853, 855; State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Nelson (Iowa 1969), 166 N.W.2d 803.
On June 26, 1970, plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven by his father on University Avenue in the city of Des Moines. He was struck and injured by "concrete blocks and other large hard objects thrown by a large group of individuals" as the vehicle passed along this heavily traveled thoroughfare. Plaintiff alleges the City of Des Moines was negligent in failing to warn plaintiff of the danger to passing motorists from the people congregated near the street, although they were aware of such danger; in failing to close the street and divert the vehicle in which plaintiff was traveling away from a course of known danger; in failing to supervise and control a public street and to keep the same open and free from nuisance; and in failing to exercise due care to notify plain tiff of a danger known to defendant and unknown to plaintiff.
The City filed a motion asking dismissal of plaintiffs petition on these grounds:
(1) Municipal liability for personal injury inflicted by mobs or riots is based solely on mob violence statutes imposing such liability and not on common law;
(2) Municipalities are immune from liability for tort claims based upon the act or omission of officers or employees of the municipality, exercising due care, in the execution of statutes or ordinances, and
(3) Municipalities are not the insurers of the safety of travelers upon their streets.
Although plaintiff alleges a nuisance, he does not seriously urge that basis of liability and we find no facts set out upon which a finding of nuisance could be bottomed. We therefore limit our discussion to the issue upon which the petition must stand or fall — liability of the city for negligent failure to protect plaintiff from personal injuries by reason of mob violence or riotous conduct.
Similarly, to bring the controversy into sharp focus, we consider only the first ground of the motion to dismiss — that the city is not liable for damage inflicted by a riotous mob in the absence of a statute specifically imposing such liability.
We hold the trial court properly dismissed plaintiff's petition and we affirm.
The question to be answered is whether chapter 613A, enacted by the Sixty-second General Assembly in 1967, making governmental subdivisions, including municipalities, liable in tort to the extent therein set out makes the city responsible for damages inflicted by riots or mobs upon a showing its police force was negligent in carrying out statutory police duties.
Plaintiff insists chapter 613A, The Code, abrogated governmental immunity for all municipal torts; that the circumstances pled do not fall within any of the exceptions contained in section 613A.4; and that he may recover upon proof of negligence by the police in their handling of the disturbance.
The City, on the other hand, maintains that damage resulting from the illegal conduct of mobs or riotous assemblages is not compensable under a statute which discards the defense of governmental immunity, but no more. The City argues such liability arises only if a specific riot or mob violence statute so provides.
Although the City does not delineate its position in these terms, we take it that in order to prevail the City must show the facts alleged by plaintiff — assuming, as we must, their truth — do not fall within the definition of tort in section 613A.2. We say this because liability is prescribed by that statute for all municipal torts except those excluded by section 613A.4. We have already indicated these exceptions have no application here. See Boyle v. Burt, 179 N.W.2d 513, 517 (Iowa 1970), which, although affirmed by operation of law on a four-to-four split, was not challenged on .the statement that chapter 613A eliminated "any common law immunity in tort previously accorded designated various governmental subdivisions" including cities and towns.
The petition and motion to dismiss squarely present for the first time the question of liability for damages inflicted by a mob or resulting from a riot, assuming the municipality or its police department to have been negligent in failing to prevent or control the outbreak. The parties so presented and argued the case, both in the trial court and here. We so consider and decide it now.
If the petition alleges matter constituting a tort under section 613A.2, The Code, the motion to dismiss was improperly sustained since that section imposes liability for all torts except these contained in the four exceptions of section 613A.4, none of which is applicable here. We should mention that the motion to dismiss includes as one of its grounds reliance on the "due care" exception of the statute. However, we have not considered it in reaching our conclusion.
We hold the petition does not allege the commission of a tort upon which any relief could be granted, and for reasons hereinafter set out, we hold further that a municipality is not liable for mob-inflicted damage, either to personal property or to the person, in the absence of a statute specifically imposing such liability on the city.
Section 613A.2 establishes municipal tort liability as follows:
"Except as otherwise provided in this Chapter, every municipality is subject to liability for its torts or those of its officers, employees, and agents acting within the scope of their employment or duties, whether arising out of a governmental or proprietary function."
We held in Strong v. Town of Lansing, 179 N.W.2d 365 (Iowa 1970), the effect of this language was to remove the defense of governmental immunity from the commission of all torts except as limited by section 613A.4, under which four classes of claims are exempted from the operation of the statute.
Under section 613A.1, a tort is defined as "every civil wrong which results in wrongful death or injury to person or injury to property and includes but is not restricted to actions based upon negligence, breach of duty, and nuisance."
All definitions of tort include as the starting point the violation of a duty running from the alleged wrongdoer to his victim. Black's Law Dictionary, Revised Fourth Ed., page 1660, 52 Am.Jur., Torts, section 2, page 362, and section 10, page 367; 86 C.J.S. Torts § 6, page 926; Gendler v. Sibley State Bank, 62 F.Supp. 805, 813 (District Court, Southern District of Iowa 1945).
It is here that plaintiff fails, for under the facts alleged in his petition, all authority holds there is no duty running from the municipality, or its officers, to the plaintiff individually which would entitle him to recover from the city for its failure to protect him from the ravages of a mob or riot. There is no authority to the contrary.
Although plaintiff does not cite us to these statutes, apparently he relies upon section 368.7, sections 368A.17 and 368A.-18, and section 743.7 of The Code, all of which deal with the duties and powers of police officers and with the control of riots and mobs. Section 368.7 provides in part that cities shall have the power to restrain and prohibit "riots, noise, disturbance, and disorderly assemblies, and to punish any person engaged in riotous, noisy, or disorderly conduct." Sections 368A.17 and 368A.18 direct marshals and police officers to "suppress all riots, disturbances and breaches of the peace." Section 743.7 makes it a misdemeanor for an officer to neglect his duty in the suppression of a riotous assembly.
The decided cases universally hold such statutes may not be a springboard from which an individual plaintiff can recover damages for injuries inflicted upon his person or property as a result of mob action. Recovery for such damage must be based upon a statute which specifically authorizes it; a general tort statute does not permit recovery therefor.
The subject of recovery for damages inflicted upon citizens by mobs is not a new one, although it has attained increased importance in recent years because of the frequency of riots and violent demonstrations. Statutes permitting recovery for damages resulting from mob violence date back to the 13th Century in England. A number of our states have had such laws since before 1900. There are now more than twenty which have such statutory remedies. Note; 81 Harvard Law Review (1967), 653; Comment: "The Aftermath of the Riot: Balancing the Budget," (1968) 649, 684; 50 Cornell Law Quarterly (1965), 699, 704.
Some of these allow recovery only for property damage, a few for both property damage and personal injury. Most are strict liability statutes which compensate one who is damaged by a riot without proof of fault on the part of the municipality, although several require proof of negligence. Important to our discussion is the fact there is not a single reported case of recovery for such damage without a specific mob violence statute. Westminster Investing Corporation v. G. C. Murphy Company (1970) 140 U.S.App.D.C. 247, 434 F.2d 521, 523.
This is conceded, though criticized, in numerous law review articles on the subject. Note; "Municipal Tort Liability: Statutory Liability of Municipalities for Damage Caused by Mobs and Riots, 50 Cornell Law Quarterly (1965), 699, 707; "Riots and Municipal Liability," 14 N.Y. Law Forum (1968), 858-862; Note; "Compensation for Victims of Urban Riots," 68 Columbia Law Review (1968), 57, 65, 67; "Mob Action: Who Shall Pay the Price?", 44 Journal of Urban Law (1967), 407, 417-420.
Nor is this, as some have suggested, because the general rule of governmental immunity prevailing until recent years made it unnecessary to ascribe any other reason to a denial of liability. Some decisions, it is true, made this the test, but in others the rule was placed squarely on an absence of substantive right.
An early statement of the rule appears to Turner v. United States (1919), 248 U.S. 354, 358, 39 S.Ct. 109, 110, 63 L.Ed. 291, 294, where Justice Brandéis said in a case involving a claim against an Indian tribe for damage incurred as a result of mob violence, "Like other governments, municipal as well as state, the Creek Nation [Indian tribe] was free from liability for injuries to persons or property due to mob violence or failure to keep the peace. Such liability is frequently imposed by statutes upon cities and counties. But neither Congress nor the Creek Nation had dealt with the subject by any legislation prior to 1908. The fundamental obstacle to recovery is not the immunity of a sovereign to suit, but the lack of a substantive right to recover the damages resulting from failure of a government or its officers to keep the peace. The claimant's contention that the defendant owed to the claimant, as its own grantee, a greater duty than it owed to other persons in the territory to protect him against mob violence, finds no support in reason or authority." (Emphasis added.)
In an early Kentucky case, Prather v. City of Lexington, 52 Kentucky (13 B. Monroe) 559, 561 (1852), the court said, "We know of no principle of law that subjects a municipal corporation to a responsibility for the safety of the property within its territorial limits; nor has any case been cited in which such a principle has been recognized or established."
This same principle was announced in Ward v. Louisville, 55 Kentucky (16 B. Monroe) 184, 193 (1856). In more recent times, the result has been invariably the same. In Steitz v. City of Beacon (1945), 295 N.Y. 51, 64 N.E.2d 704, the issue was a failure of the fire department to afford adequate fire protection. The case arose after sovereign immunity had been removed in New York, and still the court ruled there was no right upon which an individual could recover. The court said, page 706, "Quite obviously these provisions [for fire protection] were not in terms designed to protect the personal interest of any individual and were clearly designed to secure the benefits of a well ordered municipal government enjoyed by all as members of the community." The court significantly went on to say the legislature should not be deemed to have imposed such an obligation upon the city in the absence of a clear indication that this was the intent of the statutory enactment.
We discuss the question of legislative intent later.
This case, too, relies upon the rule announced in Restatement 2d, Torts, section 288, page 29, particularly comment (b) on section 288(a).
In the 1969 case of Huey v. Cicero, 41 Ill.2d 361, 243 N.E.2d 214, 216, the supreme court of Illinois said, "Independent of statutory or common-law concepts of sovereign immunity, the general rule is that a municipality or its employees is not liable for failure to supply general police or fire protection. Exceptions to the rule have been found only in instances where the municipality was under a special duty to a particular individual, such as protecting a material witness from threatened injury of third parties. " (Emphasis added.)
In Henderson v. City of St. Petersburg (Florida App.1971), 247 So.2d 23, a citizen had requested police protection while delivering packages in a particularly dangerous neighborhood. It was not afforded and he was shot and killed while there. At page 25, the Florida Appellate Court said, "The general rule is that neither a municipality or its employees is liable for failure to supply general police protection, even though our courts have held municipal corporations liable for affirmative negligence or intentional torts committed by their police officers or employees. Exceptions to this general rule have been made, however, where the municipalities were under a special duty to a particular individual. "
In Westminster Investing Corp. v. G. C. Murphy Company, supra, (434 F.2d at 523), the court made this statement, "Up to now, the unvarying response which the courts have given to this query is that, in the absence of legislation, municipalities and other governmental bodies are not pe-cuniarily responsible for destruction and injury wreaked by rioting mobs. No reported case holds a governmental body liable in these circumstances, or indicates that there could be liability without a statute or ordinance. All the statements by courts are the other way." And, at page 525, the court said, "There has been, it is true, some erosion of the immunity of states and municipalities from suit, but this has mainly come about in those fields in which established patterns of responsibility have already been set through decades of litigation — the areas of contracts and of ordinary torts. In those segments the courts, to the extent they do away with immunity, are simply removing barriers to suit, not erecting new causes of action unknown to the developing common law. In contrast, by imposing municipal liability for riot-caused damage we would be marching straight into a difficult region, never before plotted by courts acting alone." And, at page 526, this, "We hold, therefore, that the Murphy Company has, at present, 'no substantive right to recover the damages resulting from failure of a government or its officers to keep the peace.' [Turner v. United States, supra, 248 U.S. at 358, 39 S.Ct. at 110, 63 L.Ed. 291]."
Other case authority to the same effect may be found in Wong v. City of Miami, 237 So.2d 132, 134 (Florida 1970), where the court said liability for riot damage was not being denied "merely because sovereign immunity had not been relaxed sufficiently by prior decisions."
Silver v. City of Minneapolis, 284 Minn. 266, 170 N.W.2d 206 (1969), was decided on the issue of discretionary exercise of police power under the Minnesota statute, a provision which does not appear in chapter 613A. Nevertheless this language at page 210 is of interest: "We do not believe that the legislature in lifting the bar of sovereign immunity intended to permit recovery in a case such as this [damage resulting from mob violence]. Had it intended to do so it could easily have said so, as it has, for example, in the case of lynching .
"The case of National Board of Young Men's Christian Association v. United States, 395 U.S. 85, 89 S.Ct. 1511, 23 L.Ed.2d 117, did not involve an action brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act, but it did involve the right of plaintiffs to recover in the Court of Claims for damages sustained when the United States troops, during riots in Panama, entered plaintiffs' building. The rationale involved in the plaintiffs' claim is analogous to that involved here. Mr. Justice Harlan, in a concurring opinion, said, 'Petitioners claim that they may recover on a bare showing that they were afforded "inadequate protection" has an additional defect which should be noted. If courts were required to consider whether the military or police protection afforded a particular property owner was "adequate", they would be required to make judgments which are best left to officials directly responsible to the electorate.
' While the rioters are surging through the streets out of control, everyone must recognize that the Government cannot protect all property all of the time. I think it appropriate to say, however, that our decision today does not in any way suggest that the victims of civil disturbances are undeserving of relief. But it is for the Congress, not this Court, to decide the extent to which those injured in the riot should be compensated, regardless of the extent to which the police or military attempted to protect the particular property which each individual owns.' "
Another case of interest in this area is Hart's Food Stores, Inc. v. City of Rochester, 44 Misc.2d 938, 255 N.Y.S.2d 390, 391 (1965), where the court said, "At this point, let us dispose of any claim that the city-defendant is liable at common law for damages caused by mobs or riots. The Supreme Court of the United States has steadfastly held that a municipality incurs no liability at common law for damages sustained as a result of mobs or riots. That court held that the right of recovery was not founded in common law but would have to be created by an act of the legislature."
Again in Amato v. City of New York (U.S.D.C., Southern District of New York 1967), 268 F.Supp. 705, 710, this principle was stated when the court sustained a motion to dismiss in this language:
"The reason the City is not liable for failing to act is not because it is immune as sovereign but because there is no duty owed any individual plaintiff."
A similar decision is found in Motyka v. City of Amsterdam (1965), 15 N.Y.2d 134, 138, 256 N.Y.S.2d 595, 597, 204 N.E.2d 635, 636, involving negligence of the fire department after the defense of governmental immunity was no longer available and cities had been made answerable equally with individuals and private corporations for their wrongs. The Court of Appeals of New York said:
"But just as it is necessary to sustain an action against an individual or private corporation to ascertain whether it is under a duty to a plaintiff, so, also, it is necessary to decide whether a city is under a duty to a plaintiff irrespective of sovereign immunity. The rule is that, independent of sovereign immunity, a municipality is not liable for failure to supply general police and fire protection. ⅜ * 5fC »
Running through the case law and literature on this question is the rationale which denies recovery because there is no duty owing by the municipality or its police force to the individual citizen. Without such duty, there cannot be a cause of action.
"The heart of the problem centers upon the inquiry of whether or not there is a duty on the part of the municipal corporation to an individual member of the public —not the public at large — to exercise due diligence in protecting and guarding him against the damages that could be inflicted by a mob. Any study of liability must pri marily focus on this point." Sengstock, "Mob Action: Who Shall Pay the Price?", supra, 44 Journal of Urban Law at page 412.
This same statement is made by the author in "Riots and Municipal Liability," 14 N.Y.Law Forum (1968), page 860.
See also McQuillin, Municipal Corporations, Third Ed., section 53.145 and Restatement of Torts 2d, section 288, page 29.
Plaintiff's petition failed to allege facts upon which it could be found the city owed him a duty separate or superior to that which it owed the public generally. In the absence of such an obligation he cannot recover.
So far we have talked only of defendant's duty to protect plaintiff from the violence of the unruly crowd, but what we have said disposes, too, of plaintiff's argument that defendant must warn him of impending danger. If, as we hold, there is no duty sufficient to support this action on the question of defendant's obligation to protect plaintiff individually, then there is no duty either to warn him of possible danger from the unlawful assemblage.
Plaintiff's main premise, of course, is that the now discarded principle of governmental immunity was the only obstacle barring recovery for damages such as he claims here and that its demise authorizes suit against a municipality for personal injuries inflicted by mob violence. Implicit in this argument is the contention that chapter 613A must be interpreted to include the negligence of the police department in either preventing or controlling a riot or civil disturbance as actionable under the definition of tort contained in the chapter.
We are convinced the accepted rules of statutory interpretation do not permit this. The ultimate goal of all in construing statutes, of course, is to determine and give effect to the legislative intent in enacting the law. In discovering such intent we consider the language used, the purposes to be served and the evil sought to be remedied. We assume the legislature knew the existing state of the law and prior judicial interpretations of similar statutory provisions. We assume, too, its use of terms was in the accepted judicially established context unless there is clear evidence to the contrary.
In this case we assume, therefore, the legislature was familiar with the fact no court had ever construed a tort to include damage done by riotous mobs, no court had ever held the city owed a separate independent duty to furnish police protection to an individual citizen as against the public as a whole, and no court had allowed recovery for damages such as plaintiff sustained here in the absence of a specific riot damage statute authorizing it.
To hold under these circumstances that the provisions of chapter 613A include within the definition of tort or civil wrong the type of claim for which plaintiff seeks recovery would run contrary to the accepted canons of statutory interpretation. 82 C.J.S. Statutes § 321, page 560; 50 Am. Jur., Statutes, section 223, page 200, and section 294, page 274; 2 Sutherland, Statutory Construction (Third Ed., Horack), section 4501, page 314, 315, and section 4510, page 327, 328; Buchmeier v. Pickett, 258 Iowa 1224, 1228, 1229, 142 N.W.2d 426 429 (1966); Hubbard v. State, 163 N.W.2d 904, 909 (Iowa 1969); Overbeck v. Dillaber, 165 N.W.2d 795, 797 (Iowa 1969); Wilson v. Iowa City, 165 N.W.2d 813, 822 (Iowa 1969); Dobrovolny v. Reinhardt, 173 N.W.2d 837, 840 (Iowa 1970); Cedar Memorial Park Cemetery Association v. Personnel Associates, Inc., 178 N.W.2d 343, 350 (Iowa 1970).
In summary, we repeat our previous holdings that chapter 613A, The Code, abrogated governmental immunity as a defense to all torts committed by a municipality except those exempted under the provisions of 613A.4. For the reasons heretofore set out we further hold that property damage or personal injuries resulting from the negligent failure of the municipality, or its police department, to prohibit, prevent, or control a riot cannot be a tort as defined in 613A.1(3) under the facts pled by plaintiff; and we therefore hold plaintiff's petition fails to state a cause of action upon which any relief could be granted.
The order of the trial court dismissing the petition is affirmed.
Affirmed.
MOORE, C. J., and MASON, RAWL-INGS and REES, JJ., concur.
REYNOLDSON and BECKER, JJ., dissent.
UHLENHOPP, J., joins in Division II of the dissent.