Court Opinion

ID: 9569249
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:11:52.940058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:51:02.549663
License: Public Domain

Hunstein, Justice,
concurring specially.
I write specially because I cannot agree with the majority that hospital authorities created pursuant to the Hospital Authorities Law are not discharging an essential governmental function. This Court recognized in 1894 that “[i]n the discharge of such duties as pertain to [the preservation of the public health], the State is acting strictly in the discharge of one of the functions of government.” Love v. City of Atlanta, 95 Ga. 129, 133 (22 SE 29) (1894). The legislature has “since 1792 recognized the duty of the public to provide for the care of the poor, and since 1808 has delegated the performance of this function to [local governmental] agencies.” DeJarnette v. Hosp. Auth. of Albany, 195 Ga. 189 (7) (23 SE2d 716) (1942). Our Constitution expressly authorizes counties to provide “[p]ublic health facilities and services, including hospitals,” Art. IX, Sec. II, Par. III (a) (3), a provision which delegates to counties the authority to discharge “a purely governmental function, affecting the welfare not only of the *45citizens resident within its [boundaries] but of all the citizens of the commonwealth generally . . . .” Love, supra at 132-133.
Decided February 28, 1994 —
Reconsideration denied March 18, 1994.
Walden G. Housman, Jr., for appellant.
Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Bryant, Gary B. Blasingame, J. Ralph Beaird, for appellee.
The reasons cited by the majority fail to justify disregarding the 200-year-old acknowledgment that the provision of health care to its citizens is one of the basic reasons government exists. DeJarnette, supra. As to the majority’s “duplication of services” rationale, the mere fact that services performed by a hospital authority are also provided by private-sector enterprises (albeit to a clientele of the private sector’s choosing) does not mean an essential governmental function is not being performed, unless this Court wants to apply that same holding to county law enforcement and sanitation departments, whose functions are likewise duplicated in the private sector. As to the economic rationales set forth in the majority opinion, one need only review the statistics brought to this Court’s attention in the amicus brief filed by the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority, doing business as Grady Memorial Hospital, to recognize the majority holding’s many weaknesses.
The majority opinion ignores constitutional authority, disregards plain language in statutory law,10 and condemns as mere sophistry this Court’s opinions wrestling over the issue whether hospital authorities’ sovereign immunity had been waived. See, e.g., Med. Cntr. Hosp. Auth. v. Andrews, 250 Ga. 424 (297 SE2d 28) (1982). Its protestations to the contrary, the majority is not just clarifying the law of Georgia: it is changing the law to hold, for the first time since the Hospital Authorities Law was first enacted 53 years ago, that the operation of county hospitals is not the kind of governmental function entitled to the protection of sovereign immunity. I do not find that change to be justifiable. Rather, I would hold that the defendant hospital authority, like the county that created it, is entitled to assert the defense of sovereign immunity. However, because I would hold that this defense has been waived to the extent of the defendant hospital’s liability insurance, I can concur in judgment only.

 OCGA § 31-7-75 states that county-established hospital authorities “exercise public and essential governmental functions.”