Becker v. Beaudoin

Decision Date09 February 1970
Docket NumberNo. 617-A,617-A
Citation106 R.I. 562,261 A.2d 896
PartiesHelen BECKER, Executrix of the Estate of Frank Harold Becker v. Harold E. BEAUDOIN, Town Treasurer of the Town of Coventry. ppeal.
CourtRhode Island Supreme Court

Robert R. Afflick, West Warwick, for plaintiff.

Albert L. Frechette, Jr., Town Sol., Coventry, Robert J. McOsker, City Sol., David J. Kehoe, Edward F. Malloy, Asst. City Sols., Providence, on behalf of City of Providence, amici curiae.

Edward Bromage, Jr., Henry M. Swan, Conrad M. Cutcliffe, Providence, on behalf of Thomas C. Murphy as Administrator of Estate of Michael P. Murphy, amici curiae.

ROBERTS, Chief Justice.

This civil action to recover damages resulting from the death of Frank Harold Becker was brought pursuant to the provisions of the Wrongful Death Act, so called, G.L.1956, § 10-7-1, et seq., after the timely making of a claim against the Town of Coventry pursuant to the provisions of § 45-15-5 and denial thereof by the town council. The matter was subsequently heard by a justice of the Superior Court on the defendant's motion to dismiss, which was granted. From that decision the plaintiff prosecuted an appeal to this court.

The plaintiff alleges that Becker had been taken into custody by the state police in the course of the investigation of a homicide. He was subsequently turned over to the Coventry police and by them was incarcerated in the cell block at the Coventry police station. At about three o'clock in the morning of July 25, 1966, while so locked up, he fashioned a rope from a blanket and hanged himself. It is alleged in the complaint that the Coventry police had been cautioned that Becker was in a state of severe mental depression and that he should be carefully watched while incarcerated because of his suicidal tendencies. The complaint goes on, however, that the Coventry police, despite such knowledge, negligently allowed him to possess in his cell a blanket with which he ultimately took his own life.

The defendant's motion to dismiss in this case relies specifically on the doctrine of governmental immunity as stated in the case of Kelley v. Cook, 21 R.I. 29, 41 A. 571. There this court held that, in appointing police officers, the appointing authority was merely exercising a function of government, in which the city had no particular interest and from which it derived no special benefit or advantage in its corporate capacity. We went on to hold that the police officer, therefore, is not to be regarded as an agent of said city so as to render the municipality liable for his tortious conduct. It is clear from the record that the trial justice, in granting the motion to dismiss, relied on Kelley v. Cook, supra, holding that in these circumstances a municipality cannot be sued.

In Kelley the court dealt with the question of whether a municipality would be liable for the tortious conduct of a police officer. However, it was but one of a number of early cases in which the rule that has long prevailed in this state was developed, that is, that municipal corporations are immune from liability for the tortious conduct of their agents and servants in the performance of a governmental function but are liable when engaged in similar tortious conduct in the performance of a proprietary function. See Aldrich v. Tripp, 11 R.I. 141; Wixon v. City of Newport, 13 R.I. 454.

The doctrine of municipal immunity as applied in this state recognizes that a municipality may act in a dual capacity. It may, on the one hand, act as a corporate individual engaging in what have become known as proprietary functions. In the exercise of these corporate powers, a municipality generally is subject to civil liability for the omissions, negligence, or misconduct of its officers, agents, and servants. However, a municipal corporation may also act in the discharge of duties of a public character from which it derives no corporate advantage and in the exercise of which it is performing what is characterized as a governmental function. This court has clung to the doctrine that in the exercise of such a public or governmental function a municipality is not subject to civil liability for the tortious conduct of its agents or servants unless such liability is specifically imposed by statute. Wroblewski v. Clark, 88 R.I. 235, 146 A.2d 164. It has been, therefore, the settled rule that a municipal corporation is immune from liability for the tortious conduct of its agents and servants when it is acting in the discharge of some function for the state or public in a matter in which it has no private or corporate interest. Karczmarczyk v. Quinn, 98 R.I. 174, 200 A.2d 461.

We have stated the general rule on municipal immunity with such emphasis because, in the posture in which the instant cause is presented, it purports to confront this court with the issue as to whether the police department of a municipality, when engaged in the care and custody of prisoners, should have immunity from liability for the tortious conduct of members of the department in the discharge of that duty. It is to be realized, however, that the real issue before us is much broader. What is confronting us for decision is whether the doctrine of municipal immunity in the field of governmental functions should be abandoned.

If the doctrine as applied here is defensible at all, it is so because the control and custody of prisoners by the police is conduct engaged in in the exercise of the police function because, in so acting, the police are performing a governmental function. In short, the immunity of police officers so engaged derives from the basic doctrine of immunity of municipalities from liability for the acts of their agents and servants engaged in a governmental function. Obviously, then, inherent in the issue raised here is the question of the validity of the whole concept of immunity from liability of municipalities for the tortious acts of their agents and servants in the performance of a governmental function.

The doctrine of municipal immunity for tortious conduct engaged in during the performance of a governmental function as distinguished from a proprietary function has long been the majority rule in the United States. Much has been written as to the source of the doctrine and the reasons for adherence to it by American courts. An excellent discussion of the theory that it carried over into American jurisprudence the concept of the English law that the King could do no wrong and that the sovereign was above the courts is set out in Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District, 55 Cal.2d 211, 214, 11 Cal.Rptr. 89, 359 P.2d 457, 458, footnote 1. Many of the cases to which reference is hereinafter made in discussing the doctrine also contain expositions of various theories upon which the doctrine rests. In our opinion, however, it is unnecessary to discuss the theories upon which the doctrine is predicated. It suffices to say that the doctrine of municipal immunity distinguishing between governmental function and proprietary function was the majority rule in this country practically until the last decade. The question is now whether it should be abrogated in this state by judicial decision.

The immunization of municipal corporations from liability for the tortious conduct engaged in by their officers or servants during the performance of a governmental function has been repudiated repeatedly during the last decade. In 1957 in Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, Fla., 96 So.2d 130, 133, 60 A.L.R.2d 1193 the court, in abolishing the distinction between governmental and proprietary functions, stated that in its opinion and because of incongruities in an application of the immunity doctrine '* * * the time has arrived to face this matter squarely in the interest of justice and place the responsibility for wrongs where it should be.' The court notes its failure to adhere to the doctrine of stare decisis in so doing. However, it said: 'The modern city is in substantial measure a large business institution. While it enjoys many of the basic powers of government, it nonetheless is an incorporated organization which exercises those powers primarily for the benefit of the people within the municipal limits who enjoy the services rendered pursuant to the powers. To continue to endow this type of organization with sovereign divinity appears to us to predicate the law of the Twentieth Century upon an Eighteenth Century anachronism. Judicial consistency loses its virtue when it is degraded by the vice of injustice.' Id. at 133.

The Illinois court repudiated the doctrine in Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit District No. 302, 18 Ill.2d 11, 163 N.E.2d 89, 86 A.L.R.2d 469, the court stating its reasons for its repudiation of the doctrine as follows: 'It is a basic concept underlying the whole law of torts today that liability follows negligence, and that individuals and corporations are responsible for the negligence of their agents and employees acting in the course of their employment. The doctrine of governmental immunity runs directly counter to that basic concept. What reasons, then, are so impelling as to allow a school district, as a quasi-municipal corporation, to commit wrongdoing without any responsibility to its victims, while any individual or private corporation would be called to task in court for such tortious conduct?' Id. at 20, 163 N.E.2d at 93.

The doctrine was also repudiated in 1961 by the Supreme Court of California in Muskopf v. Corning Hospital District, supra. There the court, speaking through Mr. Justice Traynor, said: 'The rule of governmental immunity for tort is an anachronism, without rational basis, and has existed only by the force of inertia. * * * None of the reasons for its continuance can withstand analysis. No one defends total governmental immunity. In fact, it does not exist. It has become riddled with exceptions, both legislative * * * and judicial * * * and...

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