Woodford v. City of St. Petersburg

• Decision Date: 14 December 1955
• Citation: 84 So.2d 25
• Parties: Nelson Filmore WOODFORD, Appellant, v. The CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG, a Florida Municipal Corporation, Appellee.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 25

84 So.2d 25

Nelson Filmore WOODFORD, Appellant, v. The CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG, a Florida Municipal Corporation, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Florida, Special Division A.

Dec. 14, 1955.

Robert G. McNulty and McNulty & McNulty, St. Petersburg, for appellant.

Lewis T. Wray, Harry I. Young, Frank D. McDevitt and John Robert Terry, St. Petersburg, for appellee.

THORNAL, Justice.

Appellant Woodford, plaintiff below, seeks reversal of an order sustaining a motion to dismiss his complaint with prejudice.

The complaint alleged in substance that the appellee City owned, maintained and regulated a public park known as 'Crescent Lake Area,' which park included a baseball diamond known as 'Huggins Field.' Appellant's homeplace, including his yard, adjoined Huggins Field on the south. It is alleged that appellee permitted and invited the New York Yankee Baseball Club, a professional major-league baseball team to conduct 'daily Spring training' in the area described as Huggins Field; that daily practice of the Yankees attracted great numbers of spectators, including groups of young men and boys who chased baseballs which were hit or thrown beyond Huggins Field onto adjoining lands. It is specifically alleged that frequently each day various groups of boys organized themselves into 'flying squadrons,' possibly best described as 'football formations.' These groups included blockers and tacklers who would precede the flying wedge and tackle and block out any person interfering with the objective of the group to retrieve the baseballs. It is further alleged that this practice constituted a nuisance dangerous to persons and property; that the nuisance had continued for several weeks prior to the date of plaintiff's injury; that the City knew or should have known of the nuisance and its dangerous potentialities, but that despite the existence of the nuisance and the knowledge thereof of the City, and City failed 'to use reasonable and prudent care to protect the persons or property of adjacent landowners.'

It is further set out that on the day in question, the appellant was lawfully in his backyard during the time that the New York Yankees were practicing, that one of the heavy hitters hit a ball outside the field into appellant's yard, whereupon the usual flying squadron was organized in appellee's park, pursued the ball onto appellant's adjoining property and in the process of retrieving the ball, ran into and upon the plaintiff, knocked him down, fractured his second lumbar vertebra and generally caused plaintiff to suffer considerable bodily injuries. Hence, this suit against the City.

The trial judge sustained a motion to dismiss the complaint on the stated ground that even admitting the existence of the alleged nuisance, any effort on the part of the City to have abated the nuisance and prevent the trespass to appellant's property would have involved an exercise of the police power calling into action the municipal police force and that under the established law of this state, a municipality cannot be held liable for the negligence of its police department whether for acts of commission or omission.

We have consistently held that in the performance of strictly governmental functions a Florida municipality enjoys a sovereign immunity from liability for damages resulting from torts. Although there has been a tendency in recent years to limit the doctrine, we continue to recognize the rule that a municipality in this state is not liable for damages resulting from the negligent acts of its police force. It requires no peculiar construction of the rule to agree that similarly a municipality should not be liable...