Court Opinion

ID: 9702511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:14:58.980755+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:38.222845
License: Public Domain

Moore, J.-
I dissent.
As stated in the majority opinion appellant’s sole assigned error is that the whole doctrine of governmental immunity is outmoded and should be abrogated by the court. Yet Division I consisting of several pages of the majority opinion is devoted to identifying quasi corporations as compared to municipal corporations. Both perform governmental functions and by prior decisions have some immunity from tort liability. Any attempt to distinguish between them as to liability for negligent use of bleachers at an athletic event would only add another ridiculous example of the doctrine. Our decisions have already created too many. For example, if a child is injured as a result of negligence at a private or Sunday school recovery may be had but if at a public school immunity bars recovery; if a street, public health, police or fire department vehicle is negligently operated causing injury immunity protects the public body but if done by a private corporation or an individual liability follows; if an individual is injured in a public park or airport immunity may or may not apply depending on the location on the premises; if a defect in a street causes injury recovery is permitted if within a city but is barred by the doctrine of immunity if on a county road. Others could be cited.
We are not alone in being faced with the problem of eliminating such absurdities from the law. Text writers and law reviews have for the last several decades unanimously condemned such confusion and contradictions of municipal tort law. In recent years numerous other courts have denounced the municipal immunity doctrine and by decision have abrogated. Several will be quoted later in this dissent.
In 75 A. L. B.. 1196, a classic observation as to the sociological aspects of sovereign immunity appears which has since been quoted with approval in several jurisdictions: “* * * The *350whole doctrine of governmental immunity from liability for torts rests upon a rotten foundation. It is almost incredible that in this modern age of comparative sociological enlightenment, and in a republic, the medieval absolutism supposed to be implicit in the maxim, ‘the King can do no wrong,’ should exempt the various branches of the government from liability for their torts, and that the entire burden of damage resulting from the wrongful acts of the government should be imposed upon the single individual who suffers the injury, rather than distributed among the entire community constituting the government, where it could be borne without hardship upon any individual, and where it justly belongs.”
The majority opinion does not dispute the modern trend which recognizes the immunity rule is unjust, unsupported by any valid reason and has no rightful place in modern society but refuses to follow the holding of an overwhelming majority of the more recent cases that being court-made the rule should be eliminated by its creator. To hold the legislature should bury this court’s mistakes of the past seems as illogical as the rule itself.
The annotation in 86 A. L. R.2d 489 follows the case of Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit Dist., 18 Ill.2d 11, 163 N.E.2d 89, 86 A. L. R.2d 469. That decision abolishes the previous long existing tort immunity of school districts in Illinois. It permits recovery for injuries received by a child while riding-on a school bus. It recognizes the principle of stare decisis makes the accomplishment of justice its primary object and does not compel the blind following of precedents.
On page 502, 86 A. L. R.2d, the editor states:
“This ease may be of great significance even outside Illinois, because of the impact it conceivably will have on those courts which adhere to the immunity rule with ever-increasing reluctance and which may be swayed by the courageous example of the Illinois Supreme Court, as well as by its arguments, to reconsider their position in the light of new developments.”
Indeed it has had great impact and has been followed by almost all recent opinions written on the subject.
*351Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit Dist., supra, at pages 20, 25 of 18 Ill.2d, pages 93, 96 of 163 N.E.2d, states:
“It is a basic concept underlying the whole law of torts today that liability follows negligence, and that individuals and corporations are responsible for the negligence of their agents and employees acting in the course of their employment. The doctrine of governmental immunity runs directly counter to that basic concept. What reasons, then, are so impelling as to allow a school district, as a quasi-municipal corporation, to commit wrongdoing without any responsibility to its victims, ivhile any individual or private corporation would be called to task in court for such tortious conduct? * * *
“Defendant strongly urges that if said immunity is to be abolished, it should be done by the legislature, not by this court. With this contention we must disagree. The doctrine of school district immunity was created by this court alone. Having found that doctrine to be unsound and unjust under present conditions, we consider that we have not only the power, but the duty, to abolish that immunity. We closed our courtroom doors without legislative help, and we can likewise open them.’ Pierce v. Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital Assn., 43 Wash.2d 162, 260 P.2d 765, 774.”
In Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, Fla., 96 So.2d 130 (written before Molitor), the Florida court abolished the long established municipal corporation immunity from liability for the torts of police officers. At page 132 it is said:
“The appellee here contends that any recession from the rule of immunity should come about by legislation rather than judicial decree. It is insisted that the immunity rule is a part of the common law which we have adopted and that therefore its abolition should come about only by statute. We are here compelled to disagree. * * * We can see no necessity for insisting on legislative action in a matter which the courts themselves originated.”
The court continues on the next page:
“In doing this we are thoroughly cognizant that some may contend that we are failing to remain blindly loyal to the doctrine of stare decisis. However, we must recognize that the law *352is not static. The great body of our laws is the product of progressive thinking -which attunes traditional concepts to the needs and demands of changing times. The modern city is in substantial measure a large business institution. While it enjoys many of the basic powers of government, it nonetheless is an incorporated organization which exercises those powers primarily for the benefit of the people within the municipal limits who enjoy the services rendered pursuant to the powers. To continue to endow this type of organization with sovereign divinity appears to us to predicate the law of the Twentieth Century upon an Eighteenth Century anachronism. Judicial consistency loses its virtue when it is degraded by the vice of injustice.” (Emphasis ours.)
This writer feels compelled to cite and quote several opinions written subsequent to Molitor v. Kaneland.
McAndrew v. Mularchuk, 33 N. J. 172, 193, 162 A.2d 820, 832, overrules many earlier cases and holds a city liable for injury to a child negligently shot by a policeman. Therein it is said:
“The borough argues that any such change should come about, if at all, by action of the Legislature. But the limitation on the normal operation of respondeat superior was originally placed there by the Judiciary. Surely it cannot be urged successfully that an outmoded, inequitable, and artificial curtailment of a general rule of action created by the judicial branch of the government cannot or should not be removed by its creator.”
The California Supreme Court in Muskopf v. Corning Hospital Dist., 55 Cal.2d 211, 213, 218, 359 P.2d 457, 458, 461, states’:
“After a reevaluation of the rule of governmental immunity from tort liability we have concluded that it must be discarded as mistaken and unjust. * * *
“It is strenuously urged, however, that it is for the Legislature and not the courts to remove the existing governmental immunities. Two basic arguments are made to deny the court’s power: first, that by enacting various statutes affecting immunity the Legislature has determined that no further change *353is to be made by the court; and second, that by the force of stare decisis the rule has become so firmly entrenched that only the Legislature can change it. Neither argument is persuasive.
“The doctrine of governmental immunity was originally court made. i<: * *
“The state has also enacted various statutes waiving substantive immunity in certain areas. * * *
“Nor are we faced with a comprehensive legislative enactment designed to cover a field. What is before us is a series of sporadic statutes, each operating on a separate area of governmental immunity where its evil was felt most. Defendant would have us say that because the Legislature has removed governmental immunity in these areas we are powerless to remove it in others. We read the statutes as meaning only what they say: that in the areas indicated there shall be no governmental immunity. They leave to the court whether it should adhere to its own rule of immunity in other areas.”
As observed in Division V of the majority opinion our legislature also has enacted a few statutes which indirectly recognize some of the evils of the doctrine of governmental immunity but they leave its elimination to us. The injustices resulting therefrom are caused by our rule. Why should the legislature interfere when we refuse to correct our past mistakes? It is our duty to see that justice is done. “Policy” or any other reason does not justify our inaction.
In Williams v. City of Detroit, 364 Mich. 231, 284, 111 N.W.2d 1, 16, 17, the doctrine of governmental immunity is abrogated prospectively by the court. That court cites and quotes at great length many legal writings, law reviews and decisions by other courts dealing with the problems now before us, and there said:
“All distinguished writers recommend corrective legislation, enacted with the adjusted detail carefully drawn statutes only can provide. So do I. But what is an appellate court to do when the legislative prpcess remains comatose, year after year and decade after decade, the court meanwhile bearing the onus of what was done judicially during the dim yesterdays and maintained to this day by the self-stultifying fetish of stare decisis? *354Must the court continue to proclaim its impotence as legislators shrug their responsibility with a nod of risus sardonicus toward the error-guilty judicial branch? My answer is that this Court may relieve itself of past error by confessing and adjudging that error, and that it may at the same time force what all students of the problem have rightly sought for lo these many years; a statute relieving the injured citizen from the total burden of municipal negligence and still controlling the result so that municipal functions may be carried on without serious financial risk.”
The Wisconsin court after extensive review of legal writings, decisions of other courts and its own contrary precedents-joins the ever-increasing parade of courts in abrogating governmental immunity in Holytz v. City of Milwaukee, 17 Wis.2d 26, 33, 37, 115 N.W.2d 618, 621, 623, stating:
“There are probably few tenets of American jurisprudence which have been so unanimously berated as the governmental-immunity doctrine. This' court and the highest courts of numerous other states have been unusually articulate in castigating the existing rule; text writers and law reviews have joined the chorus of denunciators. * * *
“We are satisfied that the governmental-immunity doctrine has judicial origins. Upon careful consideration, we are now of the opinion that it is appropriate for this court to abolish this immunity notwithstanding the legislature’s failure to adopt corrective enactments.”
The question of the scope of the abrogation of the rule is answered by the Wisconsin court at page 40 of 17 Wis.2d, page 625 of 115 N.W.2d:
“The case at bar relates specifically to a city; however, we consider that abrogation of the doctrine applies to all public bodies within the state: The state, counties, cities, villages, towns, school districts, sewer districts, drainage districts, and any other political subdivisions of the state — whether they be incorporated or not.”
Following the above cited eases and others our sister state to the north, Minnesota, in a case involving injury to a child from a defective slide in a kindergarten .classroom prospectively *355abrogated by court decision the doctrine of governmental immunity.
Spanel v. Mounds View School District No. 621, 264 Minn. 279, 118 N.W.2d 795 (December 1962), brands the rule as archaic and prospectively overruled as a defense with respect to tort claims against school districts, municipal corporations, and other subdivisions of government on whom immunity had been conferred by judicial decision. At pages 291, 292 of 264 Minn., page 803 of 118 N.W.2d, it is said:
“The Minnesota Legislature has not wholly ignored the problem. School districts have been authorized to provide liability insurance and to waive immunity with respect to claims so insured. Such laws are important steps toward mitigating the harshness of the immunity doctrine. However, we do not share the view that a court-made rule, however unjust or outmoded, becomes with age invulnerable to judicial attack and cannot be discarded except by legislative action.”
The Nevada court in Rice v. Clark County, 382 P.2d 605, 608 (May 1963), holds sovereign immunity does not extend to counties so as to relieve them for their negligent operation of roads. The court states:
“It is contended that it is for the legislature and not the courts to remove immunity. We so stated in Taylor v. State and University, supra. There we were considering the liability of the State of Nevada and the University of Nevada for negligence. Here, where only a county’s liability is involved, we do not hesitate to say that since its immunity was court made, this court as well as the legislature is empowered to reject it.”
In Stone v. Arizona Highway Commission, 93 Ariz. 384, 393, 381 P.2d 107, 113 (April 1963), the doctrine of governmental immunity from tort liability is abolished. The Arizona court states:
“It has been urged by the adherents of the sovereign immunity rule that the principle has become so firmly fixed that any change must come from the legislature. In previous decisions (the latest being Lee v. Dunklee, supra) this court concurred in this reasoning. Upon reconsideration we realize that the doctrine of sovereign immunity was originally judicially created. We *356are not convinced that a court-made rule, when unjust or outmoded, does not necessarily become with age invulnerable to judicial attack. This doctrine having been engrafted upon Arizona law by judicial enunciation may properly be changed or abrogated by the same process.”
"With such an almost unanimous holding as shown by these eases and others cited therein it is most difficult to understand the majority opinion. It cites and apparently relies on Clark v. Ruidoso-Hondo Valley Hospital, 72 N. M. 9, 380 P.2d 168, and Fette v. City of St. Louis, Mo., 366 S.W.2d 446.
In Clark v. Ruidoso, supra, the court refused to abrogate the governmental-immunity rule as against county hospitals primarily because the New Mexico legislature had made provisions for those injured by negligence of the state or a subdivision thereof in the event liability insurance was carried. At page 13 of 72 N. M., pages 170, 171 of 380 P.2d, it is said:
“We see no reason (the legislature having taken the action that it has) for the court to reconsider a rule of law that has been effective for so many years in this jurisdiction.”
We have no such legislative enactment.
Fette v. City of St. Louis, supra, simply refuses to follow the modern authorities on the subject of whether the court or the legislature should abrogate the doctrine. It holds the matter should be left to the legislature because several state legislatures have taken some action after abrogation by the court. The fallacy of such an approach is clearly shown by the question— “"What has happened in Missouri ?” and the answer — “Nothing”.
Several times in the past this court has suggested abrogation should come from the legislature. Nothing has been done to eliminate our court-made unjust rule. We should abrogate the rule now. As demonstrated in the cases any necessary legislative action will follow.
In the past we have admitted our mistakes, overruled precedents and adopted proper legal principles as indicated by modern trends and majority rules.
In Lindquist v. Des Moines Union Ry. Co., 239 Iowa 356, 30 N.W.2d 120, we return to the common-law rule of negligence and recognize statutory requirements as being merely a minimum *357standard. We overrule several prior eases. We also change an established rule of evidence and made evidence of prior similar accidents admissible. We said at page 363, 239 Iowa, pages 123, 124, 30 N.W.2d: “This rule is neither based upon reason nor sound judgment and should not be persisted in.”
Without hesitation we again overruled prior decisions.
In Stuart v. Pilgrim, 247 Iowa 709, 74 N.W.2d 212, this court changed completely the rule regarding liability of a non-driver owner of a motor vehicle. In doing so a long well established line of cases was overruled. At pages 713, 714, 247 Iowa, pages 215, 216, 74 N.W.2d, this court states:
“The problem before us now is whether more harm will be done by overruling our previous cases in order to install what we think is clearly the correct principle, or by adhering to an unsound decision in the interest of the rule of stare decisis. It is of the greatest importance that the law should be settled. Fairness to the trial courts, to the legal profession, and above all to citizens generally demands that interpretations once made should be overturned only for the most cogent reasons. The law should be progressive; it should advcmee with changing conditions. But this does not mean that its forward progress should be over the dead bodies of slain and discarded precedents. Legal authority must be respected; not because it is venerable with age, but because it is important that courts, and lawyers and their clients may know what the law is and order their affairs accordingly.
“We have concluded here, however, that more mischief will be done by adhering to the precedent established in the Secured Finance Company case than by overruling. It proceeds upon a wrong principle, built upon a false premise, and arrives at an erroneous conclusion. It is of course incumbent upon us to make clear our reasons for so determining.” (Emphasis added.)
In Haynes v. Presbyterian Hosp. Assn., 241 Iowa 1269, 1273, 1274, 45 N.W.2d 151, 154, this court abrogates the doctrine of immunity of charitable institutions for negligence of its agents. Prior decisions were overruled. We said:
“Thus it is evident that times have changed and are now changing in the business, social, economic and legal worlds. The *358basis for and the need of such encouragement is no longer existent.
“The law’s emphasis generally is on liability, rather than immunity, for wrongdoing. Charity is generally no defense. It is for the legislature, not the courts, to create and grant immunity. The fact that the courts may have at an early date, in response to what appeared good as a matter of policy, created an immunity does not appear to us a sound reason for continuing the same when under all legal theories it is basically unsound, and especially so when the reasons upon which it was built no longer exist.” (Emphasis added.)
This last quote expresses exactly what I believe should be our views here. We need only to change “charity” to “governmental activity”.
In fairness to the able trial court it must be stated he,- like each trial judge in our last three cited cases, was duty bound to follow precedent. It is our responsibility and duty to alter de-cisional law to produce commonsense justice. As to our doctrine of governmental immunity we have already waited too long. I would join the vast majority of the other courts in abrogating it.
I would reverse.
Hays, Peterson and Thornton, JJ., join in this dissent.