Court Opinion

ID: 9645415
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:23:48.552061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:27.485614
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Norvell,
joined by Justices Griffin, Culver and Hamilton, dissenting.
The respondent, Sarah Daniels, was injured when she fell as a result of stepping upon fresh paint which the employees of the City of Austin had placed upon the surface of a street in order to mark a parking space adjacent to a parking meter. A serious question is urged as to the evidential support of the jury’s findings, but regardless of whether the city’s employees were negligent in using a particular type of paint, or in the methods employed by them in applying the paint, or in failing to give proper warning of the presence of the paint upon the street, the city should not be held liable for the injuries sustained by respondent because the city in maintaining parking meters and incidental parking spaces marked off by painted lines upon the surface of the street was acting in a governmental as distinguished from a proprietary capacity and hence was immune from tort liability. City of Galveston v. Posnainsky, 62 Texas 118. The classic example of a municipality’s acting in a governmental capacity is the enactment and enforcement of a police regulation. In 1937, when parking meters were something of a novelty, the Fort Worth Court of Civil Appeals in Harper v. City of Wichita Falls, 105 S.W. 2d 743, decided that the erection and maintenance of parking meters upon city streets was an exercise of the police power. This Court refused a writ of error in the case and it is of interest to note that the ordinance there upheld contained provisions for “the designation of spaces for parking of vehicles and for the installation and operation of parking meters, such spaces to be indicated by painted lines upon the surface of the street within the parking meter zone; the parking meters to be placed upon the curb adjacent to and alongside of the individually marked spaces to be identified, and with signal devises indicating whether or not the parking space is then in use.” 105 S.W. 2d 746.
The above paragraph states the controlling facts and the law which to my mind should control the disposition of this case. I would reverse the judgments of the trial court and the Court of Civil Appeals and render judgment for the City of Austin.
However to the Court of Civil Appeals and a majority of this Court, the record does not present a simple case of injury *638resulting from the exercise of a city’s governmental powers. On the contrary the city is held liable to respondent for her injury in rather complicated opinions containing many pages. As I understand the Court of Civil Appeals opinion, its primary holding is based upon the theory of nuisance, — that the jury in effect found “that the placing of the' paint in the manner that jt was put down created a nuisance.”
The respondent in her reply brief argues that the city’s employees in painting the parking lines along the street were performing a proprietary rather than a governmental, function.
This Court accepted neither of these theories as a basis of its decision and I shall notice them only incidentally and say simply that in my opinion this is not a nuisance case and that the city’s employees in painting parking lines along the street were carrying out a governmental rather than a proprietary function. According to the majority opinion, the decision to affirm the judgments of the courts below is based upon the theory that the City breached its duty to keep its streets in a reasonably safe condition. While this theory is easily stated and undoubtedly is one of general application, its attempted application to the facts of this case raises formidable difficulties. These, I would discuss.
Under the thesis adopted by the Court, the single act — marking parking spaces upon the surface of the street — constitutes both the exercise of a governmental function with conseauent immunity from liability, and the breach of a proprietary duty which renders the city liable in damages. Could it not with equal logic be said that the negligent parking of a fire truck in the street while firemen made use of the same in putting out a fire in Mr. Brown’s house, would render the city liable to Mr. Brown in damages when upon rushing to his fire-threatened house, he collided with the fire truck which blocked the street and rendered the same unsafe for use by the travelling public? We seemingly have the law granting immunity and at the same time taking immunity away. This cannot be a sound legal proposition. Parking meters are located upon sidewalks and lines marking parking spaces are placed upon streets, and the result of the rule accented by this Court is to destroy the municipal immunity usually attendant upon governmental activities contrary to long-established public policy.
It is not my purpose to debate the wisdom of this policy in modern times and under present-day conditions, other than to *639say that the policy exists and that the doctrine of governmental immunity has been repeatedly recognized by the courts of this state.1 If the doctrine is to no longer obtain, it should be repudiated outright, preferably, in view of our judicial precedents, by legislative or constitutional action, rather than be destroyed piecemeal by repeated judicial nibblings.
There are some rather apparent distinctions between the authorities relied upon by the Court to support its order of affirmance which may be alluded to briefly. First, this is not a case wherein the city’s servants were engaged in carrying out a proprietary function and negligently failed to make proper repairs to the street. Secondly, this is not a case involving unrepaired holes in the street or breaks in paving surfaces. Thirdly, this is not a case of obstructions erected and left remaining in the street for some considerable period of time. In order to make applicable certain authorities cited in the majority opinion, it is necessary to ignore their logical basis which is the presence of some element over and above mere negligence, and reduce days and hours to minutes and seconds. I would again emphasize that, in essence, this is a case in which the very act, — painting Stripes upon the street in pursuance of a governmental function is held to be a breach of proprietary duty to maintain a safe street. In City of Port Arthur v. Wallace, 141 Texas 201, 171 S.W. 2d 480, the chugholes in the street were not placed therein by the city in the exercise of a governmental function. In Kling v. City of Austin, Texas Civ. App., 62 S.W. 2d 689, an obstruction was erected and left standing in a driveway in violation of a duty to maintain safe and useable traffic ways. The obstruction was a fire plug and the furnishing of fire protection is a governmental function. However, this case can easily be reconciled with authoritative expressions of the law relating to the doctrine of .nuisance. More than mere negligence was in*640volved, but a dangerous and persisting situation was created by an affirmative act of the servants of the city and no measures were taken to correct the condition. To return to the fire truck illustration: Had firemen in the course of fighting a fire gouged out holes in the pavement of the street which were left unfilled and unrepaired to someone’s subsequent injury, municipal liability could probably be predicated upon the failure to remedy a dangerous situation as was the case in Kling v. Austin. Crow v. City of San Antonio, 157 Texas 250, 301 S.W. 2d 628, a street obstruction case, presents a similar situation. None of the Texas cases cited by the Court support the proposition that municipal immunity disappears when the governmental action taken renders a small portion of a city street slipper for a brief period of time.2 The Court says that, “This is the first case in this Court dealing with a slippery substance deliberately put upon the surface of a street by a city.” The word “deliberately” was evidently deliberately used to fend off future asserted liability because of oil and grease from police cars, fire trucks and garbage conveyances dripping or dropping upon the city’s streets, rendering them slick and slippery. But, logically, can a distinction be drawn between paint deliberately applied with a paint brush and lubricating oil or grease which flows onto the street from a carelessly serviced police car?
There is something to be said for clarity in the law and recognizable demarcations of liability. Extensions of legal doctrines by judicial construction often bringing uncertainty and confusion in their wake. While I recognize the majority opinion as a closely reasoned and ably written legal pronouncement, I nevertheless feel that it constitutes a departure from the law of this state with reference to municipal tort immunity for governmental actions. While City of Houston v. Shilling, 150 Texas 387, 397, 240 S.W. 2d 1010, 1016, 26 L.R.A. 2d 935, presented a somewhat different factual situation from the case now before us, I feel that the warning contained in Mr. Justice Smedley’s dissent is applicable here:
*641“This Court should remember what was said by it in City of Port Arthur v. Wallace, 141 Texas 201, 204, 171 S.W. 2d 480, 481. There the Court, referring to the rule as to liability of the city for negligence in discharging its proprietary functions and the rule as to nonliability for negligence in discharging its governmental functions, said: ‘the rule of liability in one function and non-liability in the other is so well established in this State that, if change is to be made, it should be made by the legislature and not by the courts/
“The function, whether governmental or proprietary, includes and should be held to include, all of the elements or parts of the function. Unless it is so held there will no longer be a well defined distinction between governmental and proprietary functions. The principal vice in the decision of the majority is that it opens the way to the destruction of a long established principle of law by taking apart heretofore well settled governmental functions and seeking to find in some part something that may seem to be proprietary in nature/’
I respectfully dissent.
Opinion delivered April 20, 1960.

. — City of Galveston v. Posnainsky, 62 Texas 118, Article 6701-d, sections 13, 15, 16, 18 and 27, Vernon’s Ann. Texas Stats., Harper v. City of Wichita Falls, Texas Civ. App., 105 S.W. 2d 743, wr. ref., Parson v. Texas City, Texas Civ. App., 259 S.W. 2d 333, wr. ref., Baker v. City of Waco, Texas Civ. App., 129 S.W. 2d 499, no writ hist., 18 McQuillin, Municipal Corporations, section 53.24 wherein it is said that,- “The doctrine exempting a municipal corporation from private action for torts resulting from the performance of its governmental functions, steadily adhered to by the most recent judicial decisions, as above indicated, is based on the familiar reason that the undertaking is not to promote the private interests of the municipality as a corporate entity, but rather for the public benefit, and in the performance of such obligation the municipality is a mere public agent, either of the state or of the local community. The reason, as often expressed, is one of public policy, to protect public funds and public property. ‘Taxes are raised for certain specific governmental purposes; and, if they could be diverted to the payment of the damage claims, the more important work of government, which every municipality must perform regardless of its other relations, would be seriously impaired if not totally destroyed * * *.’ ”

. — Counsel for both sides are to be commended for their diligence in research. The respondent has produced an oninion written by a trial judge of the City Court of the City of New York, County of Bronx, overruling a motion to set aside a jury verdict. Cleary v. City of New York, 47 N.Y.S. 2d 456. This opinion supports respondent’s position and may well be the only one in existence which does so. The petitioner in turn cites Bernardine v. City of New York, 294 N.Y. 361, 62 N.E. 2d 604, 161 A.L.R. 364, by the Court of Appeals to show that municipal immunity has boon waived by statute in the State of New York and the decision in Cleary could have well been based upon this waiver. However, much of this argument as to New York law is beside the point. To my mind the Cleary decision is not persuasive. If the doctrine of municipal immunity for governmental acts is to be limited or abandoned, the New York example of legislative action may well be considered.