Court Opinion

ID: 9747459
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:16:23.591362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:23.872111
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion bt
Mr. Justice Roberts :
Around 2:00 a.m. on the morning of March 9, 1968, Officer Robert Copeland of the Harrisburg Police Department entered the Towne House Cafe to conduct a “stakeout” of the premises in the course of investigating a series of thefts from that establishment. At approximately 6:00 a.m. that morning, Gerald Smeltz, an *227employee of the Cafe, unlocked a door to the Cafe and entered in order to commence his duties for the day. Almost immediately after Mr. Smeltz entered the building, Officer Copeland, without warning and without apparent reason, opened fire upon and killed Gerald Smeltz. Smeltz’s widow and children brought wrongful death and survival actions against Copeland and the City of Harrisburg. The City filed a demurrer, relying upon the doctrine of governmental immunity. The trial court sustained the demurrer and a majority of this Court today affirms that decision.
It is with no great relish that I once again dissent from the majority’s stubborn adherence to the antediluvian doctrine which insulates the municipal governments of this Commonwealth from any liability for their tortious conduct. It has been twelve years since this Court astutely recognized that only “errors of history, logic and policy” can be offered in support of this rule. Morris v. Mt. Lebanon Township School District, 393 Pa. 633, 635, 144 A. 2d 737, 738 (1958). Yet during this twelve year period this Court has, for reasons never explained to my satisfaction, continued to refuse to abolish this judicially created and perpetuated doctrine. Russell v. Men of Devon, 2 T.R. 667, 100 Eng. Rep. 359 (1788); Mower v. Inhabitants of Leicester, 9 Mass. 247 (1812) ; Dillon v. York City School District, 422 Pa. 103, 220 A. 2d 896 (1966).1 Indeed, in the eight short months since I last discussed this problem at any length, Laughner v. Allegheny County, 436 Pa. 572, 261 A. 2d 607 (1970) (dissenting opin *228ion),2 the doctrines of sovereign or governmental immunity have been judicially abolished in no less than four more states: Idaho, in Hopper v. State, Idaho , 473 P. 2d 937 (1970), prospectively abolished all sovereign and governmental immunity; New Jersey, in Willis v. Department of Conservation and Economic Development, 55 N.J. 534, 264 A. 2d 34 (1970), abrogated all sovereign immunity; Rhode Island, in Becker v. Beaudoin, R.I. , 261 A. 2d 896 (1970), prospectively abolished all governmental immunity; and Nebraska, in Johnson v. Municipal University of Omaha, 184 Neb. 512, 169 N.W. 2d 286 (1969), prospectively abolished all governmental immunity.
I once again urge this Court to excise this unjust and illogical doctrine from the law of this Commonwealth. It has been nearly three hundred years since the courts of England decided to give expanded jurisprudential effect to the then-current theological doctrine that the King could no wrong. Our concepts of the rights of sovereigns and of governments have progressed considerably since that time, and it is indeed regrettable that this Court has and continues to decline to advance along with them.

I note that the majority’s citation of Meagher v. Commonwealth, 439 Pa. 532, 266 A. 2d 684 (1970), which dealt with sovereign immunity, or the right of the state to be immune to suit, is inapposite in the context of a case dealing with governmental immunity, which involves the extension of that immunity to lesser political subdivisions.

 See also Flinchhaugh v. Cornwall-Suburhan Joint School Authority, 438 Pa. 407, 409, 264 A. 2d 708, 709 (1970) (dissenting opinion).