Court Opinion

ID: 9771531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:46:34.486592+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:41:14.970556
License: Public Domain

POPE, Justice
(dissenting).
Today’s decision judicially invests scores of municipal personnel with powers to transcend the law which requires the filing of a timely notice of a claim. The decision empowers those persons to handle claims for cities whether they possess any authority to do so or not. The majority also holds that written notice of a claim which is required by the city charter is no longer necessary.
Mrs. Roberts gave nobody written notice of her claim until seven months after the accident. The majority says that a telephone call will do. The charter requirement that the notice state “when, where and how the injury or damage was sustained” is also nullified. Mrs. Roberts’ summary judgment affidavit is silent about her timely furnishing those facts to anyone even by telephone. It is no longer necessary to set “forth the extent of the injury or damage” or to give “the names and addresses of all witnesses upon whose testimony such person is relying to establish the injury or damage.” And finally, the majority holds that the person whom a claimant calls needs to possess no authority to deal with the subject, and authority to act for and bind a city will now be determined by the ordinary prudent man test.
It would be a mistake to think that today’s opinion is an adoption of principles of estoppel as a means to avoid injustice. Texas has long recognized that an authorized agent for a city can bind a city on principles of estoppel. That was the reason that the estoppel operated in Cawthorn v. City of Houston, 231 S.W. 701 (Tex.Comm’n App.1921, jdgmt adopted); City of Waco v. Thralls, 172 S.W.2d 142 (Tex.Civ.App.1943, writ ref’d w. o. m.), and Dias v. City of San Antonio, 488 S.W.2d 522 (Tex.Civ.App.1972, writ ref’d n. r. e.) relied upon by the majority. But in each of those instances, the agent who acted for the city in creating the estoppel possessed the authority to act. I am in accord with those principles.
I disagree with a rule which permits an interloper, one who has no authorization from a city, to bind a city upon principles of estoppel. We have overruled an unbroken, settled, and so far as I have been able to detect in the legal literature, an uncriticized line of cases which say that it must be an authorized agent who works an estoppel upon the city. These are some of the cases: City of Houston v. Hruska, 155 Tex. 139, 283 S.W.2d 739 (1955); Phillips v. City of Abilene, 195 S.W.2d 147 (Tex.Civ.App.1946, writ ref’d); Hallman v. City of Pampa, 147 S.W.2d 543 (Tex.Civ.App.1941, writ ref’d). The new rule finds sparse support anywhere, and it means that oral notice to random persons in scattered municipal departments can keep claims afloat for indeterminate periods, whether the designated and authorized municipal agent ever gets the word or not.
The majority trades our settled law for a rule which is supposed to be espoused by Rabinowitz v. Town of Bay Harbor Islands, 178 So.2d 9 (Fla.1965), and by Fredrichsen v. City of Lakewood, 6 Cal.3d 353, 99 Cal. Rptr. 13, 491 P.2d 805 (1971). Rabinowitz is a case in which the legally designated agent for receipt of notice, the Town Attorney, was “fully informed of the entire situation by the Town manager.” Fredrichsen was an instance of misleading information which a City Clerk supplied a claimant. It was the City Clerk, the very person who possessed the authorization to receive the notice of claim, who frustrated the timely filing of the claim. Those eases are slight support for a rule which excuses a late *82filing of a claim by reason of conduct of an unauthorized agent.
Our Texas rule which has today been overruled comes from charter provisions which authorize cities by section 6 of article 1175:
6. To provide for the exemption from liability on account of any claim for any damages to any person or property, or to fix such rules and regulations governing the city’s liability as may be deemed advisable.
Since the notice rules find their origin in legislative acts to begin with, I would think that the Legislature would have been the more appropriate body to set aside this court’s clear rulings.
I respectfully dissent.