Court Opinion

ID: 3551453
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 23:04:00.202235+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:06:39.078137
License: Public Domain

FROM ROCKINGHAM CIRCUIT COURT.
The defendants raise three questions upon the report of the referee: (1) That no action will lie against a city for neglect to build or repair a sewer; (2) that if such action will lie, a city is answerable only for neglect to use ordinary vigilance and care to keep its sewers open and free from obstruction; and (3) that the defendants did not receive seasonable notice of the obstruction to prevent the injuries which the plaintiff has received.
By ch. 44, sec. 9, Gen. Stats., it is provided that "city councils shall have power to construct drains and common sewers through highways, streets, or private lands, paying the owners such damages as they shall sustain thereby, said damages to be assessed by the mayor and aldermen in the same manner and with the same right of appeal from their *Page 293 
decision as in case of the laying out of highways; and may require all persons to pay a reasonable sum for the right to open any drain into any public drain or common sewer." This section is an exact reenactment of section 21 of the act to establish the city of Portsmouth, approved July 6, 1849, under the authority of which the defendants must have rebuilt their sewer in Hanover street in the year 1867, the General Statutes not taking effect till January 1, 1868. The statute authorized and empowered the defendants to construct public sewers, but did not impose that duty upon them. It was optional with the defendants whether they would or would not take the benefit thus conferred upon them. This authority the defendants accepted when they accepted their charter in 1848, under the provisions of section 28; and it needs no argument to show that a city which constructs sewers under the authority of a statute, virtually accepts the power therein conferred, and will not be admitted to allege the contrary. This case, therefore, is not to be distinguished from Child v. Boston, 4 Allen 41, upon the question of acceptance by the defendants of the statute conferring the authority to construct sewers. When, then, the defendants made their election by accepting the act of 1849, and by executing the powers therein granted, and also granted by the General statutes, and received pay from the plaintiff for opening her drain into their public sewer, the question arises whether they are liable to her for injuries sustained by her by reason of their neglect to keep their sewers in proper repair.
Under what circumstances a municipal corporation will be held liable to an individual suffering injuries from the neglect of such corporation to perform a public duty, was very fully discussed by PERLEY, C.J., in Eastman v. Meredith, 36 N.H. 284. In that case it was decided that though a town-house, which was erected by the town, was so defectively constructed that when a town-meeting was held in it the floor broke down and a voter was thereby injured, yet he could not maintain an action against the town to recover damages for the injury. But the learned chief justice remarks, — "Grants are sometimes made to particular towns or cities of special powers not belonging to them under the general law: and there is a class of cases in which towns and cities have been held liable to civil actions for damages caused by neglect to perform public duties growing out of the grant of such special powers, — as the power to bring water by an aqueduct for public use by those who pay a compensation for it, to light the place with gas on the same terms, or to make and maintain sewers at the expense of adjoining proprietors. Thus, in The Mayor, c., of New York in error v. Furze, 3 Hill 612, the city was empowered by special act to lay down and maintain sewers, and charge the expense upon owners and occupiers of houses and lots intended to be benefited; and it was held that an individual might maintain an action against the city to recover damages for a private injury which he had suffered from neglect of the city to keep the sewers in proper repair. The distinction between the liability of towns and cities for neglect to perform public duties growing *Page 294 
out of the powers which they exercise under the general law, and their liability when the duty arises from the grant of some special power conferred on the particular town or city, is recognized or explained in Bailey v. Mayor, c., of New York, 3 Hill 531."
Judge PERLEY further says, page 293, — "In such cases the special powers thus granted are not held by the particular town or city under the general law, and as one of the political divisions of the country. The public duty grows out of the special grant of power, and though held and exercised by a town or city, the nature of the power granted is the same as if a like power had been conferred on a private corporation created to answer the same public object; and the cases above referred to hold the town or city liable to a civil action for neglect to perform a public duty arising from the grant of the special power in the same way, and, as I understand them, upon the same grounds and reasons as private corporations are held, which are clothed with the same powers and bound to the performance of the same public duties. So far as I have had opportunity to examine this class of cases, they appear to go upon the ground that the special power, though no direct pecuniary profit may be derived from it, is granted as an immunity and peculiar privilege for the benefit of the particular town or city, and is accepted, as in the case of a private corporation, upon the implied condition of performing the public duties imposed by and growing out of it. Henley v. Lyme Regis, 1 Bing. N.C. 222; Mears v. Wilmington, 9 Ired. 73; Mayor, c., of New York v. Bailey, 2 Den. 456."
It is well settled that a private action cannot be maintained against a town, or other quasi corporation, for a neglect of corporate duty, unless such action be given by statute. Riddle v. Proprietors of locks  Canals,7 Mass. 187; Mower v. Leicester, 9 Mass. 247. "This rule of law, however, is of limited application. It is applied, in case of towns, only to the neglect or omission of a town to perform those duties which are imposed on all towns without their corporate assent, and exclusively for public purposes, and not to the neglect of those obligations which a town incurs when a special duty is imposed on it with its consent, express or implied, or a special authority is conferred on it at its request. In the latter cases, a town is subject to the same liabilities for the neglect of those special duties to which private corporations would be if the same duties were imposed or the same authority were conferred on them, including their liability for the wrongful neglect as well as the wrongful acts of their officers and agents." Bigelow v. Randolph, 14 Gray 541.
Child v. Boston, 4 Allen 41, is a case much in point, where it was held that sewers when constructed become the property of the city, and the duty of keeping them in repair devolves on the city; and the city is responsible for negligently suffering them to occasion a nuisance to the estates of the citizens whose private drains enter into them, if the nuisance does not result from their original plan of construction, and could be avoided by keeping them in proper condition. The plaintiff's drain entered the defendants' common sewer, which had its outlet *Page 295 
in the south bay at the depth of some feet below high water. By means of a waste weir, the sewer was constructed to discharge into the empty basin in the back bay when the outlet into the south bay was closed by the tide, and the water in the sewer had risen high enough to reach the waste weir. The proprietors filled in against the sewer in the back bay, thereby preventing the discharge through the waste weir and the plaintiff's premises were flowed in consequence. HOAR, J., remarked, — "Here a special authority was conferred and accepted, involving important relations to individual proprietors of land, and entire control of an easement of such a nature that negligence might not only deprive those interested of a benefit which it was designed to afford, and for which they had paid, but produce consequences actively and directly pernicious. The duty to keep the sewer free from obstructions was a ministerial duty, and the defendants were liable for negligence in its exercise to any person to whom their negligence occasioned an injury."
Judge Cooley, in his work on Constitutional Limitations, page 248 says, — "The grant by the state to the municipality of a portion of its sovereign powers, and their acceptance for these beneficial purposes, is regarded as raising an implied promise on the part of the corporation to perform the corporate duties; and this implied contract, made with the sovereign power, enures to the benefit of every individual interested in its performance. In this respect these corporations are looked upon as occupying the same position as private corporations, which, having accepted a valuable franchise on condition of the performance of certain public duties, are held to contract, by the acceptance, for the performance of those duties." The authorities are very unanimous in support of this doctrine, and are cited on page 248 of Mr. Cooley's work.
As to the second and third questions raised by the defendants, the rule in such cases is stated in Rochester White Lead Co. v. Rochester,3 N.Y. 463, to be, that "a city is bound to exercise that care and prudence which a discreet and cautious individual would or ought to use if the whole loss or risk were to be his alone." In Hume v. The Mayor, c., of New York, 47 N.Y. 639, it is said, — "The city authorities are not bound to be experts, or skilled in mechanics and architecture, and can only be held to the extent of reasonable intelligence and ordinary care and prudence." Rockwood v. Wilson, 11 Cush. 221. In Johnson v. Haverhill, 35 N.H. 74, which was an action against the town for an injury resulting from an alleged defect in a highway, it was held that the question of negligence on the part of the town does not arise except incidentally, as it is involved in the question whether the defect exists, and this latter question may depend upon the manner in which the defect originated, and the circumstances of its continuance. In such case the question of negligence is a material inquiry. And where an obstruction exists by reason of inevitable accident, without fault or negligence on the part of any person, it is not an obstruction within the meaning, of the statute unless the town had notice of it, *Page 296 
express or implied, and reasonable opportunity, by the exercise of proper care and vigilance, to have removed it before the accident occurred. It is well settled, that a municipal corporation is not liable for Injuries caused to individuals by obstructions on the highway not placed there by its own officials or by authority of the city government, until after actual notice of their existence, or until, by reason of the lapse of time, it should have had knowledge, and therefore actual notice may be presumed. Hume v. New YorK, supra, 646; Colley v. Westbrook, 57 Me. 181; Hunt v. Brooklyn, 35 Barb. 226; Cooley, page 249.
The case does not show that the referee did not apply these rules in weighing the evidence laid before him, and in coming to the conclusion which he reached. We cannot say, as matter of law, from the facts presented by the report, that the defendants did not act with the care and prudence that a discreet and cautious individual would if the whole loss or risk were to be borne by him alone. There is evidence tending to show that the thing which caused the obstruction in the sewer had been there for such a length of time that notice to the defendants must be presumed. But these were questions of fact, to be found by the referee according to the particular circumstances of this case — Johnson v. Haverhill, supra; and it is to be presumed, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that he applied the law correctly to the facts.