69 Ga. 542 (Ga. 1882), Collins v. Mayor of Macon

• Citation: 69 Ga. 542
• Opinion Judge: SPEER, Justice.
• Party Name: COLLINS v. THE MAYOR, ETC., OF MACON
• Attorney: R. W. PATTERSON; W. DESSAU, for plaintiff in error. HILL & HARRIS; S. H. JEMISON, for defendants.
• Judge Panel: JACKSON, C. J., concurred specially. CRAWFORD, Justice, concurred.
• Case Date: October 31, 1882
• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia

Page 542

69 Ga. 542 (Ga. 1882)

COLLINS

v.

THE MAYOR, ETC., OF MACON

Supreme Court of Georgia.

October 31, 1882

September Term, 1882.

1. The powers and duties of municipal corporations are legislative or judicial and ministerial. For a failure to perform the first, o?? for errors of judgment committed in their performance, the corporation is not liable; for neglect to perform ministerial duties ?? for negligent, improper or unskillful performance thereof, the corporation is liable.

( a. ) Aliter, where the act complained of is entirely outside of the general or special powers of the corporation.

2. Cities (unless acting under some special grant of power), like individuals, must so use their own property as not to damage that ?? another.

3. All persons owning lands have power to ditch and embank them so as to protect them from freshets and overflows. But to render a city liable for allowing an embankment on its land to be destroyed, it must appear that there was an imperative duty to maintain the same.

4. Intention to dedicate property to public use is essential to a dedication, but this may be proved by acts showing an assent that property should be so used and enjoyed.

( a. ) The mere use of the corporate property of a city by it for a particular purpose, is not a dedication of such property for that purpose forever.

5. Without special statutory authority by which it is made the duty of a municipal corporation to erect, or, after erecting, to maintain dykes, walls or levees to prevent the waters of a natural stream within the corporate limits from overflowing its banks and damaging a citizen's premises, no recovery can be had against the corporation for causing or permitting the destruction of such works voluntarily erected by it on its commons or the corporate domain, though they may have stood for a great length of time and been trusted to by the adjacent landholder both in making his original purchase and in making his improvements.

6. A duty to erect and maintain works to protect a bridge belonging to the corporation does not raise an obligation to keep such works on foot for other purposes, such as preventing damage to citizens by overflow.

JACKSON, C. J., concurred specially.

Municipal Corporations. Damages. Dedication. Before Judge SIMMONS. Bibb Superior Court. April Term, 1882.

Reported in the decision.

R. W. PATTERSON; W. DESSAU, for plaintiff in error.

HILL & HARRIS; S. H. JEMISON, for defendants.

SPEER, Justice.

This was an action for damages by the plaintiff in error against the defendant, which was dismissed on demurrer, to which judgment exception was taken, and error as signed thereon.

The declaration alleged, that plaintiff was the owner of certain city lots in Macon, with dwellings thereon; that...