Court Opinion

ID: 9443631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:26:17.465885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:33.428009
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The Vermont Supreme Court has disclosed a marked ingenuity in limiting the harsh, unjust, unaemocratic, and anachronistic immunity of municipalities from tort liability. I think that, in line with its decisions, that court would hold the City liable here. In reaching that conclusion, I have in mind facts which my colleagues’ opinion does not mention.
Outstanding is the evidence (undeniably sufficient to support a verdict on the subject) that the white light, the inadequacy of which caused plaintiff’s injury, was supplied by the City, to light up the street and as part of its street-lighting service, not at all as part of its street-traffic control system (which includes the red and amber lights ■on the “silent policeman”). When that “policeman” is in good order, it contains a -white light bulb used solely for street illumination; the white light bulb present when this accident happened was a temporary substitute, and thus used for street lighting alone. Accordingly, the City’s negligence had nothing to do with its “governmental” duty to regulate traffic on its streets —for negligence in the discharge of which ■it is not liable1 — but related entirely to •street lighting. This fact is crucial. For although the maintenance of streets is “governmental,” the lighting of streets is not.
The Vermont Supreme Court has often said that, if the legislature imposes a duty to perform a function, then the function is “governmental” and no liability attaches for failure to perform or negligence in the performance of that function, but that if the function although authorized is not obligatory — i. e., is voluntarily assumed — then it is “proprietary” and liability for negligence in performing it ensues.2 Thus the construction or maintenance of highways, being an imposed duty, is “governmental,” but not the construction or maintenance of sewers.3 The basis of the distinction is that the “construction and maintenance of sewers is not considered a governmental function but a power conferred upon a municipal corporation for its own benefit and that of its citizens, although its exercise may conduce to the general good.”4 In Weller v. City of Burlington, 60 Vt. 28, 35, 12 A. 215, 219, the court put in this category “water-works and the like”. In Morgan v. Village of Stowe, 92 Vt. 338, 341, 104 A. 339, L.R.A.1918F, 1000, the court said the same of lighting plants.5
For that reason, and because in dealing with municipal liability for torts the Vermont court has cited and relied on Massachusetts cases,6 I think that Dickinson v. City of Boston, 188 Mass. 595, 75 N.E. 68, 1 L.R.A.,N.S., 664, is apposite here. There it was held that, as a City has no “public duty” to light its streets, it is not liable for *536omitting to do so, yet if it does light them it is liable for negligence in such lighting. See also Aiken v. City of Columbus, 167 Ind. 139, 78 N.E. 657, 12 L.R.A.,N.S., 416; City of Galveston v. Rowan, 5 Cir., 20 F.2d 501, 502; Saulman v. Mayor, etc., of Nashville, 131 Tenn. 427, 175 S.W. 532, L.R.A.1915E, 316; cases cited in 19 A.L.R.2d 349 et seq.
If, then, the City authorities had decided that all streets, or in particular the street on which plaintiff was injured, should go unlighted, the City (for reasons above stated) would have incurred no liability to plaintiff. The City authorities, however, did decide to light the streets, this street included, and to put a street light on this particular “silent policeman.” For such street illumination, the City authorities arranged with the City’s Electric Light Department (managed by a separate Board of Light Commissioners). Although this Department also supplied electric current for the red and amber traffic signals on this “policeman,” the evidence shows that this, white light was for street illumination only. Here we have a “dual function” situation much like that in Boguski v. City of Winooski, 108 Vt. 380, 187 A. 808.
Suppose now that, instead of arranging as it did with the Electric Light Department, the City had contracted with the privately-owned Green Mountain Power Company (which, according to the evidence, supplies electric light to many of this City’s inhabitants) to furnish the white street-light on this “policeman,” but not the red and amber traffic-lights; that the company had been negligent in the way it furnished that white light (just as the City was here); and that plaintiff’s injury had been the consequence. In such circumstances, I think the privately-owned company would clearly have been liable to plaintiff. Here the City, in its “proprietary” capacity (as a business rival of the Green Mountain Power Company), undertook to supply this street lighting. Because it acted in that capacity, I think that, according to the Vermont decisions, it was liable, just as, in the supposed case, the company would have been.
Wilkins v. Village of Rutland, 1889, 61 Vt. 336, 17 A. 735, closely resembles the instant case. There the village owned and managed, through water commissioners, an aqueduct for supplying water to its inhabitants for their use, and also to the City itself for extinguishing fires. The court said that the village had the right to lay aqueduct pipes through the village streets. It did lay a pipe along a certain street “and placed therein, within the limits of the highway, in the spring of 1884, a water-box, to be used in letting on and shutting off the water, to supply a customer.” In 1886, the cap of this water-box, from some cause, came to protrude three inches above the ground. Plaintiff’s intestate, when driving his carriage in the highway at that point, was thrown from the carriage and killed, “by the wheel of his carriage getting caught and broken on the cap of the water-box.” Plaintiff sued and recovered judgment against the village, which was affirmed on appeal. The Vermont Supreme Court observed that the village was liable for negligence in connection with the exercise of its power to own and manage the aqueduct; “it being a right and privilege voluntarily assumed for its own benefit, and not a municipal duty imposed by law.” The court said that “the cause of the accident was the improper condition of the water-box * * *. This places the neglect upon the defendant as the owner and manager of the aqueduct, and not as having the supervision of and charged with the duty of repairing the highway at that point. For an injury caused by its failure to repair the highways within its limits the defendant is not liable, but for an injury caused by its failure to properly maintain its aqueduct it is liable. Welsh and Wife v. The Village of Rutland, 56 Vt. 228. It is doubtless true, as contended for the defendant, that the water-box, in its situation at the time of the accident, was an obstruction to the highway at that point, but it was an obstruction which it was the duty of the defendant, as the owner and manager of the aqueduct to remove, and not its duty as having control Of the repairs on the highways within its limits. If the aqueduct had been owned and managed by a third person, and if the defendant had, under the law, been liable to the plaintiff because it had failed to re*537move the obstruction caused by the water-box, under the decision of this court the defendant could have recovered what damages and costs it might have been compelled to pay the plaintiff of such third person, who caused the obstruction. On the authority of Mann v. [Central Vermont] Railroad Co., 55 Vt. 484, the plaintiff, on the facts found, could have recovered the damages sustained, in a suit directly against such third person. The defendant, standing in the place of such supposed third person, it follows that the plaintiff is entitled to recover the damages, which she has sustained of it, in this suit.”
I see no signs of a recession by the Vermont Supreme Court from the position it took in 1889 in Wilkins v. Village of Rut-land. On the contrary, that court, when there has been a doubt in such a case, has resolved it against the municipality; Boguslci v. City of Winooski, 1936, 108 Vt. 380, 389-390, 187 A. 808, is illustrative.

. See Winn v. Village of Rutland, 52 Vt. 481, 491; Weller v. City of Burlington, 60 Vt. 28, 34-35, 12 A. 215; Wilkins v. Village of Rutland, 61 Vt. 336, 337, 339, 17 A. 735; Bates v. Village of Rutland, 62 Vt. 178, 181, 182, 20 A. 278, 9 L.R.A. 363; Stockwell v. Town of Rutland, 75 Vt. 76, 79, 53 A. 132.

. Sanborn v. Village of Enosburg Falls, 87 Vt. 479, 482, 89 A. 746.

. Sanborn v. Village of Enosburg Falls, 87 Vt. at page 482, 89 A. at page 747, citing Winn v. Village of Rutland, 52 Vt. 481. See also Weller v. City of Burlington, 60 Vt. 28, 34, 12 A. 215; Stockwell v. Town of Rutland, 75 Vt. 76, 79, 53 A. 132.

. Cf. Valcour v. Village of Morrisville, 104 Vt. 119, 131, 158 A. 83.

. See, e.g., Weller v. City of Burlington, 60 Vt. 28, 34-35, 12 A. 215 (referring to the “New England idea” in these cases); Farmer v. Poultney School Dist., 113 Vt. 147, 150, 30 A.2d 89; Bates v. Village of Rutland, 62 Vt. 178, 181, 182, 20 A. 278, 9 L.R.A. 363.