Court Opinion

ID: 9697047
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:04:34.257936+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:28.807239
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
Initially, I agree with the Commonwealth Court, and with parts II and III of the majority opinion, that the appellees, the Mascaros, have stated a cause of action which could be maintained at common law against a person not having *365available a defense of immunity; that cause of action lies in trespass for the recovery of damages for personal injuries proximately caused by the negligence of appellants, the City of Philadelphia and its Youth Study Center, in allowing the detention structure to become dangerously defective and to remain in a state of dangerous disrepair despite knowledge that such defects facilitated and encouraged escapes, which condition led to the escape of the highly dangerous Claude Opher, a known escape artist and brutal sexual offender.
The Commonwealth Court relied upon this Court’s decision in Ford v. Jeffries, 474 Pa. 588, 379 A.2d 111 (1977), and our application there of sections 365 and 448 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts (1965), to conclude:
This case, as Ford v. Jeffries, is one for the jury to determine whether the local agency defendants negligently failed to maintain the Center, whether that failure was the legal cause of the plaintiffs’ injuries, whether the defendants’ acts, if negligent, afforded an opportunity to a third person to commit a crime, and whether the defendant agencies realized or should have realized that the likelihood that such an opportunity would be created and that a third person, such as Opher, would avail himself of the opportunity to commit a crime.
89 Pa.Cmwlth. 388, 492 A.2d 786 at 790.
The majority agrees with the Commonwealth Court’s interpretation of the Restatement and finds that the common law cause of action was supported not only by Ford v. Jeffries, but also by several other decisions of this Court, stating:
These cases, and cases like them, also establish liability over one charged with the control and custody of property when the custodian knows, or should have known, that the property could be misused by persons who could commit crimes.
Here, Appellants alleged that because the City and Center negligently maintained their property, Opher, a dangerous criminal, escaped. ... Given Opher’s known propensities to crime, Appellees alleged that the Center *366and City knew, or should have known, that Opher would take advantage of the defect at the Center, escape and commit more burglaries and rapes, including the ones at issue here.
Under our case law and the Restatement of Torts, Second, we have held landowners liable for failing to take precautions against unreasonable risks that stem directly and indirectly from the property including the contemplated acts of third parties, whose crimes are facilitated by the condition of the property, (citations omitted) Accordingly, Appellees have stated a cause of action which could be maintained at common law against one not having the immunity defense, and thus satisfied the first requirement imposed by the statute at 42 Pa.C.S. § 8542(a)(1), supra.
At 360.
The majority also has no difficulty in finding the requisite causation under 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 8542(a)(2) (“The injury was caused by the negligent acts of the local agency or an employee thereof ... ”), holding that “when Appellees alleged that the negligent repair of the Center was a cause of injuries to them, they were not incorrect.” At 360. This finding is proper and is amply supported by the Restatement and by the prior decisions of this Court as set forth in the majority opinion, section II.1
Despite its determinations that appellees have stated in their complaint a common law cause of action and that the averments of that complaint satisfy the statutory “threshold” requirements of the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act, 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 8542(a), and its finding that the “negli*367gent repair of the Center was a cause of the injuries” to appellees,2 the majority nevertheless denies recovery to these appellees who were seriously injured due to appellants’ negligent maintenance of the detention center. This denial of recovery is based upon an exceedingly narrow, and unwarranted, construction of the “real estate exception” of the Act, 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 8542(b)(3) which permits recovery of damages against a political subdivision where the injury results from negligence in the “care, custody or control of real property in the possession of the local agency....” The majority first offers the following interpretation of this provision:
[T]he real estate exception to governmental immunity is a narrow exception and, by its own terms, refers only to injuries arising out of the care, custody or control of the real property in the possession of the political subdivision or its employees. Acts of the local agency or its employees which make the property unsafe for the activities for which it is regularly used, for which it is intended to be used, or for which it may reasonably be foreseen to be used, are acts which make the local agency amenable to suit.
At 362 (emphasis added).
Under this interpretation, the appellees have made out a viable claim against appellants under section 8542(b)(3). Sections II and III of the majority opinion convincingly demonstrate that appellees’ injuries and damages arose out of and were caused by the negligent “care, custody and control of real property” in the possession of appellants, and that this negligence led to the predictable and foreseeable criminal acts of a third party, an inmate of that real property, the “Youth Study” detention center. But for appellants’ negligence in the care, custody and control of the real property, an innocent family would not have been *368terrorized and devastated by the predictable acts of the vicious escapee, Claude Opher, and an eleven year old girl and her mother would not have been brutally raped and sodomized in the presence of their father/husband and brother/son, both of whom were bound and gagged.
The “care, custody and control” of the detention center, if proven to be negligent, obviously rendered (in the words of the majority) “the property unsafe for the activities for which it is regularly used, ... intended to be used, ... [and] reasonably ... foreseen to be used____” After all, despite its fanciful designation as the “Youth Study” Center, the real property in question here was not a boy scout camp, a learning center, or a school for the performing arts — it was a detention center, a jail, a prison; a place to hold violent and delinquent offenders under the age of eighteen; a place to detain those offenders and keep them away from the general, law-abiding citizenry of this Commonwealth in order to avoid exactly the type of tragedy that occurred in the instant case.
If a municipality was in the possession of a water reservoir and, due to the negligent care, custody and control of that real property, the reservoir burst and caused extensive damage to persons and property a mile down the road, I submit that such negligence would fall squarely within the “real estate exception” to the Act, and the municipality would not be immune from liability. The damages caused outside the real property by the unleashing of the dangerous instrumentality housed on the property would be a foreseeable and predictable result of the negligent care, custody or control of the property. In the instant case, the dangerous instrumentality housed on appellants’ real property was a vicious criminal, and that instrumentality was unleashed by appellants’ negligent care, custody and control of the property, causing serious, foreseeable and predictable damage to persons outside of the property.
Thus, section 8542(b)(3), as initially interpreted by the majority, allows appellees to seek recovery for their damages from appellants, and does not immunize appellants from liability. However, even though the language of *369section 8542 of the Act would explicitly permit appellees to seek recovery of damages from appellants in this case, the majority somehow gleans a further, implicit limitation on recovery, holding
that the real estate exception can be applied only to those cases where it is alleged that the artificial condition or defect of the land itself causes the injury, not merely when it facilitates the injury by the acts of others, whose acts are outside the statute’s scope of liability.
At 363.
This implicit limitation is derived from the majority’s newly-announced principle of construction of this Act, that in construing the scope of an “exception” to the rule of immunity, “its extent must be narrowly interpreted given the expressed legislative intent to insulate political subdivisions from tort liability.” At 361. Once again, in creating such a miserly rule of construction, the majority ignores— indeed, it tramples upon — the rights guaranteed our citizens by the Pennsylvania Constitution.
Article .1, section 11 of the Constitution declares that: All courts shall be open; and every man for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial or delay.
Article III, section 18 states:
Other than Workmen’s Compensation, in no other cases shall the General Assembly limit the amount to be recovered for injuries resulting in death, or for injuries to persons or property.
I remain of the belief that the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act violates these provisions of the Constitution and unconstitutionally denies and/or limits the recovery of damages, justice and the right of remedy to those injured by the negligence of local agencies and municipalities. See e.g., Carroll v. County of York, 496 Pa. 363, 437 A.2d 394 (1981) (Larsen, J., dissenting); James v. SEPTA, 505 Pa. 137, 477 A.2d 1302 (1984) (Larsen, J., dissenting); Smith v. City of Philadelphia, 512 Pa. 129, 516 A.2d 306 (1986) (Larsen, J., *370dissenting). Now, the majority adds insult to constitutional injury in holding that we must construe the “exceptions" to immunity narrowly and imply further limitations on recovery that are not found in the language of the Act. In my opinion, the construction of the eight enumerated exceptions should be exactly the opposite — we should be construing these eight provisions broadly to provide the fullest coverage possible in order to minimize the constitutional damage done by the creation of a rule of immunity. This was made clear by Mr. Justice Papadakos' eloquent dissenting opinion in Smith v. City of Philadelphia, supra, (joined by this author) wherein he stated persuasively:
Nothing is clearer to me than the plain, untechnical language of [Article I] section 11. It simply guarantees that all people shall have remedies for their injuries without exception____
What is even clearer is the direct, mandatory language of Article III, section 18____
No limitation or exception is contained by the language of the Section, except for Workmen’s Compensation cases, and no other exception should be written into the Section by this Court.
I view this Section as a broad mandate by the people to the Legislature directing it not to meddle in the people’s right to recover against those responsible for injuring them. Article III, Section 18 ... stands as a bulwark, until the people otherwise direct, against all present and future attempts by the Legislature to fritter away the rights of the people. We do a great disservice to the people, whose trust we have accepted, to interpret this Section in any way but in their favor.
The majority’s present course is regrettable, because it ignores the duty entrusted to this Court of protecting rights reserved by the people, for the people, and instead creates rights in favor of the creature of the people, at the expense of the people, who in actuality, are *371the only sovereign under our form of government. Accordingly, I dissent.
512 Pa. at 150-54, 516 A.2d at 317-19 (emphasis added).
Equally regrettable is the majority’s course of action today which creates a rule of narrow construction and further limits an injured person’s right of recovery as if the Pennsylvania Constitution did not exist. While the majority of this Court has previously accepted the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act as constitutional, it has now progressed beyond passive approval of the rule of immunity to active participation in the legal conspiracy that denies the right of remedy for injuries done to our citizens.
As I stated in Mayle v. Pennsylvania Department of Highways, 479 Pa. 384, 388 A.2d 709 (1978), “I can think of no greater function or more honorable pursuit than for the [government] to care for those whom it has injured or maimed.” Id. 479 Pa. at 407, 388 A.2d at 720. Those injured and maimed citizens pay for the Youth Study Center, the reservoirs, the sewage treatment plants, the roads, the highways, etc. To construe the recovery provisions of the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act narrowly, to imply further limitations to recovery into that Act, as the majority does today, is an insult to civilizátion and a violation of the “trust we have accepted” to protect the rights reserved by the people and for the people.
I dissent.

. For further support, see Restatement (Second) of Torts section 449, Tortious or Criminal Acts the Probability of Which Makes Actor’s Conduct Negligent, and the comments thereto, and section 302B, Risk of Intentional or Criminal Conduct, and comments (e) ("There are ... situations in which the actor, as a reasonable man, is required to anticipate and guard against the intentional, or even criminal, misconduct of others.") and (e)(F) (actor liable under this section where he "has taken charge or assumed control of a person whom he knows to be peculiarly likely to inflict intentional harm upon others.”) See also Douglas W. Randall, Inc. v. AFA Protective Systems, Inc., 516 F.Supp. 1122 (E.D.Pa.1981), aff’d 688 F.2d 820 (3rd Cir.1982).

. The majority specifically holds that ‘‘at common law a negligent act includes permitting real property to fall into disrepair, thereby creating an unreasonable risk to others outside the land, and that generally speaking, such a risk can include the predictable criminal acts of third parties." At 360.