Opinion ID: 1939634
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the public function requirement

Text: Although we have now concluded that the District enjoys the immunity it seeks, we emphasize that this immunity is highly circumscribed. The government enjoys immunity from the running of time only when it sues to vindicate public rights. Thus, our task will not be complete until we have determined whether, with respect to the particular issue on appeal, the District is suing to vindicate a public or a proprietary right. [30] This question is by no means an easy one. The line between rights that accrue to the public's benefit and those that are ultimately proprietary to the government is a fine one, especially since any financial loss to the government is ultimately a loss to the public fisc. In Weiss, supra, where we held that the District's suit to recover fees owed to a public hospital was not barred by the statute of limitations, we said: The District of Columbia is seeking to replenish its treasury of money expended by a public instrumentality in the exercise of a public function. Recovery of the funds, which will benefit the public as a whole when applied to the continued operation of Glenn Dale Hospital, should not be made contingent on the diligence of public servants. 263 A.2d at 640. This passage emphasizes the expenditure of the disputed monies by a public instrumentality, its application to a public function, and the policy against allowing the laxity of public servants to erect a bar to suit. We stress, however, that while all monies the District sues upon affect the public fisc, it does not follow that every time the District sues for money it performs a public function. While the line is hard to draw, it can fairly be stated that something more is required than a naked financial interest; thus in Weiss we spoke of replenishing the treasury of funds earmarked for the performance of a particular public function. Where the District acquires a right of action directly related to its duty to perform a service to the public, or to vindicate an overwhelmingly public interest or right, a suit to recover money damages to enable the District to perform that service is public rather than proprietary. Of course, there may be other considerations, unique to each case, which must guide future courts in determining whether the public function test is met. The facts of the claim on appeal satisfy us that the District is suing to vindicate a public right. Only the most narrow reading could interpret the District's claims as purely proprietary. The hazard presented, as we have seen, is an enormous one. More than 2400 public buildings are affected. Many of these buildings, such as schools, libraries, hospitals, and government offices, are for the general use of the public, and hundreds or even thousands of people pass through each of them every day. Any child who grows up in the District and attends a public school is massively exposed; anyone who works for the District government or frequents District offices suffers similar exposure. Many thousands of residents in District public housing literally live with this threat. The men and women who serve the jurisdiction in the police and fire departments are exposed daily. We have seen that the diseases asbestos engenders are numerous, painful and deadly; the percentage of those exposed who eventually fall victim to an asbestos-related illness is prohibitively high. Unquestionably, the public at large has a profound interest in the elimination of a danger so extreme and widespread. At the same time, where other factors point to the public nature of the claim, it becomes irrelevant that the District is suing to replenish its own funds. Naturally, a suit of this kind involves the government's interest in seeing to it that the treasury suffers no loss as the result of expenditures to remove a public danger. However, it is impossible to extricate this proprietary interest completely from the larger public function; every time a government sues for money to vindicate a public interest, it is in some sense its own money that the government seeks to replenish. At oral argument, appellees attempted to draw a comparison between the interest the government asserts here and that of a large landlord, or the owner of an office building, whose property is similarly contaminated. They argued that the former case, like the latter, presented a purely proprietary interest. However, apart from differences in the scale of the threat, it is obvious that a private owner never performs a governmental function, even if her problems are comparable to those of the government, simply because she is not a government herself. No matter how many tenants she may have, her duties to them are private ones because they arise from private contractual obligations and she is a private person; but the government performs a public duty when it protects the health and safety of the public at large. Here the government is suing for the cost of removing a public danger resulting from the alleged tortious activities of appellees; the damages recovered from such a suit would therefore be used in the performance of a public function. Under these circumstances, the District's financial interest is secondary. Appellees have cited a number of cases from other jurisdictions which, they assert, prove that the interest that the District asserts here is only a proprietary one. They observe that in Trustees of Bergen Community College v. J.P. Fyfe, Inc., 188 N.J.Super. 288, 297, 457 A.2d 83, 88 (1982), aff'd, 192 N.J.Super. 433, 471 A.2d 38 (1983), certification denied, 96 N.J. 308, 475 A.2d 598 (1984), the court held, [W]here plaintiff [community college] sues because of alleged defects in building roofs, it is clear that it stands on no different footing from any owner of a building. However, Fyfe dealt only with structural roofing defects, and there is no indication that those defects posed a danger to public safety or welfare. In the context of mere repairs, therefore, the college's suit was essentially indistinguishable from a private action of the same nature. Further, in Fyfe, the plaintiff was a county college legally distinct from the state, county, or municipality, and subject by statute to the rules governing suits by private parties. By contrast, the instant case involves a suit by the government of the entire District, which is, moreover, a distinct political community and not the political subdivision of a state. While the District bears the relationship of a municipality to the United States Government, there is no larger population, distinct from the populations of the other states, of which it is a subset. Accordingly, the municipal status of this jurisdiction does not vitiate the impact of the alleged tort on the general public rather than some subgroup within the whole jurisdiction. Appellees also argue from a series of federal cases in Tennessee that the removal of asbestos from schools is not a public function. The Sixth Circuit in Anderson County Board of Education v. National Gypsum Co., 821 F.2d 1230, 1233 (6th Cir. 1987), applying Tennessee law, held that a suit by a local board of education to remove asbestos from public school buildings was not brought to further a public function, since it was one in which only local citizens [were] interested, as distinguished from [those] in which all the people of the state are interested, id., and it did not affect the finances of the state as opposed to the school board. Although we do not necessarily adopt the test used by the Sixth Circuit in applying Tennessee law, we note that the District's claim would survive it, since all citizens of the District are affected by the asbestos contamination involved, and the District's finances, rather than those of a subdepartment such as a local school board, are at stake. In Kelley v. Metropolitan County Board of Education, 615 F.Supp. 1139, 1152 (M.D.Tenn.1985), rev'd on other grounds, 836 F.2d 986 (6th Cir.1987), the court stated, in dicta, that while the provision of public education is a governmental function, the maintenance of school buildings is merely proprietary. Kelley, however, noted this principle only by way of example, since the case involved school desegregation, not the abatement of a public health hazard. Moreover, in so commenting, the Kelley court relied on a magistrate's opinion in County of Johnson, Tennessee v. United States Gypsum Co., 580 F.Supp. 284 (E.D.Tenn.1984), which was soon reversed in relevant part in County of Johnson, Tennessee v. United States Gypsum Co., 664 F.Supp. 1127 (E.D.Tenn.1985) (because operation of public schools is a public function, statute of limitations is inapplicable to county action for removal of asbestos in schools). Finally, appellees cite West Haven School District v. Owens-Corning Fiberglass Corp., 721 F.Supp. 1547 (D.Conn. 1988), wherein the court held that the statute of limitations applied to a local school district in its action to recover asbestos abatement costs. The West Haven court, like the court in Anderson County, held that the action involved a local rather than a statewide interest. As we have noted above, this issue is either inapplicable or operates in favor of the District, since the hazard potentially affects practically all of its residents. However, the West Haven court, citing Gauvin v. City of New Haven, 187 Conn. 180, 184, 445 A.2d 1, 3 (1982), also held that government acts (as opposed to proprietary acts) are not only performed for direct public benefit, but are of a supervisory or discretionary, rather than ministerial, nature. Thus, acts performed in a prescribed manner without the exercise of judgment or discretion, West Haven, supra, 721 F.Supp. at 1551, are unprotected by municipal immunity. However, we could find no other authority for the application of the discretionary function requirement to immunity from a statute of limitations. Gauvin, like all other cases that have applied the discretionary function rule, interpreted sovereign immunity from tort liability, and not immunity under nullum tempus. See, e.g., Spencer, supra, 138 U.S.App.D.C. at 51, 425 F.2d at 482. This distinction is important, since sovereign immunity from tort liability was designed to protect the discretionary acts of governmental officers from the chilling effects of potential liability, while preserving the public's access to justice in merely ministerial cases. [31] No similar policy operates where the government itself brings suit to vindicate public rights. As the District has correctly stated in its reply brief: When the government sues to recover from wrongdoers, it serves a public purpose.... When, however, government itself has been the wrongdoer, entirely different considerations apply. Courts are naturally reluctant to construe governmental functions broadly when to do so means that the government escapes liability for its misdeeds and its victims remain uncompensated. Reply Brief for Appellant at 21. Where the nullum tempus immunity exists to protect the public from the negligence of public agents or officers, see Guaranty Trust, supra, 304 U.S. at 132, 58 S.Ct. at 788-89, we do not think it is relevant whether the function that agent or officer failed to perform was ministerial or discretionary. [32] Finally, we are unconvinced by appellees' analogy to other District of Columbia public function cases, which all construe the public or proprietary nature of duties underlying tort actions brought against the District. All of these cases involve lesser functions which, while associated with duties performed by the District to secure public health or safety, are of a lesser scope and would not affect public health or safety as a whole. See Scull v. District of Columbia, 102 U.S.App.D.C. 104, 105, 250 F.2d 767, 768 (1957), cert. denied, 356 U.S. 920, 78 S.Ct. 703, 2 L.Ed.2d 715 (1958) (installation of water mains not a governmental function for tort liability purposes); District of Columbia v. Green, 96 U.S. App.D.C. 20, 21, 223 F.2d 312, 313 (1955) (operating a public market a proprietary function for tort liability purposes); Smith v. District of Columbia, 89 U.S.App.D.C. 7, 10, 189 F.2d 671, 674 (1951) (declining to hold District immune from tort liability by governmental function analysis for failing to remove snow, but absolving District of liability under ordinary negligence standard); Thomas v. Potomac Electric Power Co., 266 F.Supp. 687, 692 (D.D.C.1967) (operating a swimming pool a proprietary function). In each, a narrow interest was at stake, involving the safety of individuals or small numbers of people for tort liability purposes; none involved a hazard with an impact as broad as that presented by the widespread asbestos contamination of public facilities. We therefore reject the inference that, because we have held certain duties involving the removal of minor individual hazards to be proprietary, any response to a threat to public safety, no matter how large the threat or for what purpose the response is considered, must also be considered proprietary. Rather, as the foregoing analysis makes clear, each case must be reviewed on its own merits, taking into account the scope and severity of the problem, the cross-section of the population affected, and any other considerations that may clarify the extent to which the public at large is interested in the outcome. Considering these factors, we must conclude that appellant has articulated a public interest worthy of the municipal nullum tempus protection.