Court Opinion

ID: 9596326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:48:25.758401+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:12.632775
License: Public Domain

Jordan, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially. I concur with the majority opinion and would reverse for the additional reason that in my opinion the petition alleges facts sufficient to constitute a nuisance, the theory upon which the petition is based. If it can be said that the facts alleged are sufficient to constitute a nuisance, then the defendant municipal corporation, like any other tortfeasor, would be liable for damage resulting from the nuisance, regardless of whether it arose from the construction and maintenance of a governmental function or not. Ingram v. City of Acworth, 90 Ga. App. 719, 720 (84 SE2d 99); Archer v. City of Austell, 68 Ga. App. 493, 497 (23 SE2d 512); Delta Air Corp. v. Kersey, 193 Ga. 862 (3) (20 SE2d 245, 140 ALR 1352).
The allegations of this petition (which must be taken as true as against general demurrer, this case having been passed on by the trial court prior to the effective date of the Civil Practice Act) are sufficient to allege a nuisance and thus bring into issue the question of liability of the Town of Fort Oglethorpe. The alleged facts which take this case beyond Stanley v. City of Macon, 95 Ga. App. 108 (97 SE2d 330); Arthur v. City of Albany, 98 Ga. App. 746 (106 SE2d 347), and like cases are that the mayor, the chief of police, and all the aldermen knew that the traffic lights at this intersection (that of a city street with U. S. Highway #27) were not working correctly and had not been for two weeks and that after knowledge of said defective condition failed to repair and continued to maintain and operate them in a defective condition, and that said mayor and chief of police knew that six automobiles had collided at this intersection on the day plaintiff was injured and.did nothing to correct the situation.
Such allegations here of knowledge of a defective condition and continued maintenance of the same is exactly what this court said was lacking in Stanley v. City of Macon, supra, p. 111, pointing out that “herein lies one of the important distinctions *68between mere negligence and nuisance (in regard to the latter the question of negligence is immaterial), although nuisance may-result from negligence.” Since such allegations as were lacking in that case are present here, it moves this case from the realm of mere negligence to that of gross nuisance. A more flagrant nuisance on the part of a municipality can hardly be imagined than that of knowingly operating a traffic signal which flashes the green “go” signal to vehicular traffic approaching a busy intersection from all directions, thus requiring drivers who must proceed in accordance with such signals to engage unknowingly and unwillingly in a game of “Russian roulette.”
It is clear that any obstruction to a public street in a city is a public nuisance. Mayor &c. of Columbus v. Jaques, 30 Ga. 506, 512, citing an old English case to the effect that “all injuries whatsoever to a highway, as by digging a ditch or making a hedge across it, or laying logs of timber in it, or by doing any other act which will render it less commodious to the King’s subjects, are public nuisances at common law.” (Emphasis supplied.) In City Council of Augusta v. Jackson, 20 Ga. App. 710 (93 SE 304), it was alleged that the city granted a permit to a fraternal order to maintain and operate a street carnival and shooting gallery on certain public streets and that plaintiff’s 13-year-old son while walking along a street was hit and killed by a bullet from the shooting gallery. This court, in affirming the overruling of the city's demurrer to the petition, held such unauthorized obstruction to be a nuisance and that “the plaintiff not only avers that the defendant expressly permitted an alleged enterprise to be put in operation, but also avers that the defendant then and there knew, and had sufficient opportunity to put it on notice, as to the existence of such dangerous shooting gallery,” (p. 712), concluding that “the plaintiff’s petition charges a double wrong on the part of the defendant city, namely, causing a public street to be put in a dangerous condition, and then knowingly permitting it to remain in such condition. It charges an act of commission as well as an omission, each of which is a violation of that duty imposed by law upon every municipality to keep its streets in a reasonably safe condition for passage and travel.” P. 713. (Emphasis supplied.)
*69While the maintenance and operation of the defective traffic light was not a physical obstruction within itself, can it be said to produce a situation any less dangerous than a ditch, a hedge, logs of timber, a shooting gallery, or some other physical obstruction across the street? Indeed it was more of a mantrap and deathtrap than any of these and was sufficient to charge the defendant municipality “with causing a public street to be put in a dangerous condition and then knowingly permitting it to remain in such condition.”
The facts alleged here also distinguish this case from Arthur v. City of Albany, 98 Ga. App. 746, supra, where its was held that the city was not liable in failing to maintain a stop sign at an intersection where one had once been erected, such failure being insufficient to allege the maintenance of a nuisance: Such would be the result here had the defendant taken down the traffic signal or merely ceased operating it after its defective condition became known. What puts this case in the nuisance category is the allegation that after knowledge of the dangerous situation created by the faulty light, the defendant city continued to maintain and operate it in a defective condition, a dangerous, positive act of commission rather than the allegation of omission or failure to maintain as in the Arthur case, supra.
2. It is said in the dissent that even when a nuisance is created by the operation and maintenance of equipment used in a governmental function “no recovery can be had because no invasion of, or interference with the enjoyment of, real property of the plaintiff in proximity to the alleged nuisance is shown,” citing Stanley v. City of Macon, supra. This seems to be in conflict with what this court, speaking through Judge Powell, said in Towaliga Falls Power Co. v. Sims, 6 Ga. App. 749, at p. 752 (65 SE 844), “At common law a nuisance was regarded only as an injury to some interest in land. Blackstone’s definition of a private nuisance is ‘anything done to the hurt or annoyance of the lands, tenements, or hereditaments of another.’ The definition adopted in our Code is broader ‘A nuisance is anything that worketh hurt, inconvenience, or damage to another.’ Civil Code, § 3681. An examination of the authorities will show that the modern tendency of the American courts is *70to break away from so much of the common law rule as confined redress on account of nuisances to the damage done to some interest in real property, and as gave remedy only to persons having interests in lands. . . Under our Code we think the rule is not so rigid, but that one who has been specially endamaged by a nuisance can recover from the wrongdoer, though his damage consists in an injury to his purse or person, irrespective of whether he has had an interest in real estate damaged or not.”
The Towaliga case was cited with approval in Central Ga. Power Co. v. Nolen, 143 Ga. 776 (85 SE 945), in which Justice Lumpkin, speaking for the court said, “The injury here complained of is to health, not property. It will not be presumed that the legislature intended to authorize a corporation or an individual negligently to create a nuisance tending to destroy the lives or injure the health of others without remedy for damages resulting therefrom, unless it should clearly so appear. . . In this State damages recoverable on account of a nuisance are not limited to injury to realty; but injury to health may furnish a basis for such recovery.” Code § 72-103 provides, “If a public nuisance should cause special damage to an individual, in which the public does not participate, such special damage- shall give a right of action.” Any injury to one’s health or limb, or to one’s purse, is a special damage and it matters not that others within the sphere of the operation of the nuisance might or might not be affected. See Hunnicutt v. Eaton, 184 Ga. 485 (191 SE 919) and cases therein cited.
In any event, the Georgia rule does not require that a public nuisance cause damage to real estate before any recovery can be had by someone who suffers an injury or damage to personalty as a result thereof, where it is shown that the nuisance arises out of an obstruction in or to a street which interferes with the public right of passage. As pointed out above the continued operation of a defective traffic signal with knowledge of its defect, such as the situation here alleged to exist, amounts to an interference with the orderly flow of traffic and the public’s right of passage more substantially than a physical obstruction and should come under the same rule.
*71Chief Judge Felton also joins in this special concurrence.