Case Name: The City of Joliet v. William Harwood
Court: Illinois Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Illinois
Decision Date: 1877-09
Citations: 86 Ill. 110
Docket Number: 
Parties: The City of Joliet v. William Harwood.
Judges: 
Reporter: Illinois Reports
Volume: 86
Pages: 110–116

Head Matter:
The City of Joliet v. William Harwood.
Master aud servaht—respondeat superior. If a city employs a'person to do work which is intrinsically dangerous, such as the blasting of rook in a street for a sewer, and the contractor uses all due care, and damage results to another from a stone thrown by the blasting, the'city will be liable to respond in damages for the injury.
Appeal from the Circuit Court of Will County; the Hon. Josiah McRoberts, Judge, presiding.
This is an action by Harwood against the city, brought before a justice of the peace, taken by appeal to the circuit court, and there tried by the court, without a jury. It appeared upon the trial that the city of Joliet let a contract to O’Riley to construct a sewer through certain of its streets, according to certain plans and specifications. The work to be done was such that it was necessary to the performance of the contract that the excavation in a part of a principal street should be done by blasting rock. Each side of the street was bounded by houses. By the agreed state of facts, on which the case was submitted to the-circuit court, it appears that the contractors “used all due care, skill, and caution in the discharge of, and the covering of, all blasts discharged in the prosecution of the work; that from, and by means of, a blast in said sewer a stone was thrown against, and struck, a large front glass of' a store room in the store building of plaintiff, then owned by plaintiff and situated on said street in said city, and that the glass was thereby broken and rendered worthless; that the blast from which plaintiff was damaged was covered as O’Riley had been in the habit of' doing — apparently in a secure and skillful manner, but not so well as to prevent any stone from flying out.”
Judgment was given against the city for the value of the-glass, and defendant appeals.
Messrs. House, Hagar & Flanders, for the appellant...
Mr. Thomas H. Hutchins, for the appellee.

Opinion:
Mr. Justice Dickev
delivered the opinion of the Court :-
It is insisted that O'Riley, the contractor, is responsible-for this injury, and not the city; and this upon the position that where public work is done by an independent contractor, with the city, the doctrine of respondeat superior does-not apply. Dillon, in his excellent work on Municipal Corporations (sec. 792), says : " Such is the general rule ; but it is important to bear in mind that it does not apply where the contract directly requires the -performance of" work intrinsically dangerous, however skillfully performed. In such case a .party authorizing the work is regarded as the author of the mischief resulting from it, whether he-does the work himself or lets it out by contract."
In this case the work which the contractor was required by the city to do wrns intrinsically dangerous, however carefully or skillfully done. The right of recovery in this case does not rest upon a charge of negligence on the part of the contractor; it rests upon the fact that the city caused work to be done which was intrinsically dangerous — the natural (though not the necessary) consequence of which was the injury to plaintiff's property. In such case the city is responsible. The judgment must be affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.