Court Opinion

ID: 9619131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:22:28.606414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:37.512967
License: Public Domain

Finley, J.
(dissenting) — In Kind v. Seattle, 50 Wn.2d 485, 312 P.2d 811 (1957), the trial judge, sitting without a jury, applied the strict liability rationale or principle of Fletcher v. Rylands, L.R. 1 Ex. 265 (1866) and, accordingly, entered judgment against, the city. On appeal, this court declined to pass on the applicability of Fletcher v. Rylands, supra, but affirmed on other grounds. I concurred in the result, commenting as follows:
I believe the instant case is so closely analogous to Rylands as to call for a clear-cut application or rejection of the principle as annunciated therein by the English court.
I would apply the principle of Rylands in the instant case. The latter is not distinguishable simply on the factual ground that the defendant is a municipal corporation engaged in a proprietary activity.
The majority in the instant case, citing W. Prosser and other authorities — for whatever this may be worth — emphasizes a reluctance on the part of American courts in accepting and applying the strict liability principle of Fletcher v. Rylands, supra. This, I think, can be characterized and criticized as an unwarranted judicial reluctance to develop and to expand the law to fill an existing void as to legal remedies, and to meet a social need in a limited category of uniquely appropriate cases. And so it was with judicial reluctance, even in the time of Lord Coke, in the early development and expansion of the common law.
But curiously enough, judicial reluctance to change in the common law field — perhaps more often than not — does yield slowly to insistent and compelling need for social change. If this were not true and if judicial reluctance to change had prevailed consistently in the common law area, we would still be plagued today with the technical limitations and the inequities of the old, anachronistic common law forms of action. The latter, even today, sometimes tend to “rule us from the grave,” despite the fact they have been *69abolished by judicial decision, legislation, or constitutional provision, and the courts can operate today largely under modern rules of procedure. In any event, in a larger time span, growth has fairly consistently been a quality and a function of the great common law tradition.
Thus, it was my thinking concerning the disposition in Kind v. Seattle, supra, that the strict liability principle of Fletcher v. Rylands, supra, should have been forthrightly applied by this court, and my views as to this have not changed in the intervening years.
I do not think it would open any Pandora’s Box — certainly not to any alarming or objectionable extent — if strict liability were applied in the instant case. I believe this is particularly so in view of the unique circumstances of this case, the fact that the Port of Seattle, a municipality or public entity, is involved, and the Port of Seattle would simply be required to assume and pay as a cost of doing business the damages incurred by plaintiff Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company, a Washington corporation. In other words, the public or social benefits provided by the business or functions of the Port of Seattle should simply be expected to be assessed with the special eocpense here involved; i.e., the damages to the plaintiff telephone company would be one of the costs of such benefits and of the business or functions performed by the Port of Seattle. I say this recognizing that there was no evidence of want of due care or of deliberate or intentional negligence on the part of the Port of Seattle, and further recognizing, of course, that this involves imposition of liability without fault as a business expense of the public entity or municipality, i.e., the Port of Seattle.
For the reasons indicated, I dissent and would affirm the judgment of the trial court in the instant case.
Rosellini, J., concurs with Finley, J.
Petition for rehearing denied February 22, 1972.