Court Opinion

ID: 9536539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:01:56.221663+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:40.876763
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, Dissenting.
I concur in the reasoning and conclusion of Justice Carter.
I think the Public Liability Act (Stats. 1923, ch. 328, § 2, p. 675) covers this case. The majority seek to distinguish the many cases upholding and applying that statute by stating that (p. 489) : “The ordinary case coming within the terms of this act involves a situation where the injured person is using some type of city property that is dangerous or defective, and which he had a legal right to use, [citations and illustrations, such as using a defectively engineered or maintained street] . . . Likewise the act sustains the imposition of liability in the situation where the city is using the dangerous or defective property and injury was proximately caused thereby . . . [citations and illustrations, such as negligently using defective sewer pipe and negligently maintaining street drainage facilities, contributing to the flooding of plaintiffs’ property]. But here the city did not create the fire causing the damage to plaintiffs’ property.”
It seems to me that the attempted differentiation is not legally sound or substantial. I would think that a householder is “using” a fire hydrant and water supply when he, by himself or a city employe, attaches a hose to it and runs the water to put out an incipient fire in his house. Surely that is a legal use of a facility for which as a taxpayer he is paying. Likewise, the fire department men, and through them, the city, are “using” that property when they connect the hose and run the water. And the defective condition of the fire hydrant just as surely contributes, under the circumstances shown here, proximately to cause the damage to plaintiffs’ property by fire as does defective sewer pipe or drainage facilities contribute to cause damage in time of *498flood. The majority say “the city did not create the fire causing the damage”; I point out that in the flood cases the city did not create the water which caused the damage, nor even the law of gravity which impels water to seek a lower level by a direct route.
It is just as much a natural result for a fire, not extinguished, to consume a house built of combustible materials as it is for flood waters, not diverted or safely carried away, to damage property, subject to erosion or seepage, which lies in their path. Sewers are maintained to (among other uses) safely carry away flood waters; water mains and fire hydrants are maintained to (among other uses) extinguish fires. A householder in a city pays taxes to obtain, among other things, fire protection as well as flood protection. The Public Liability Act imposes tort liability on the city for negligently maintaining its property in a defective condition when such condition proximately causes damage while the property is being lawfully used for its designed purpose. All the conditions for liability imposed by the statute are met here.
This court has been liberal (sometimes, I have felt, more than liberal) in construing statutes and the common law to advance the outposts of tort liability as against private citizens and private corporations.1 I think that such liberality of extension—in this case an obviously discretionary interpretation and application of the statute—should more justly be indulged as against the state and municipal corporations than as against private individuals and corporations.
I should reverse the judgment.

See e.g.: Hunt v. Authier (1946), 28 Cal.2d 288 [169 P.2d 913, 171 A.L.R. 1379]; Johnston v. Long (1947), 30 Cal.2d 54, 81 [181 P.2d 645]; Raber v. Tumin (1951), 36 Cal.2d 654 [226 P.2d 574]; Peterson v. Burkhalter (1952), 38 Cal.2d 107, 114 [237 P.2d 977]; see, also, Rippe v. City of Los Angeles (1942), 50 Cal.App.2d 189 [123 P.2d 47].