Blatt v. Geo. H. Nettleton Home for Aged Women

• Decision Date: 14 February 1955
• Docket Number: No. 43487,43487
• Parties: BLATT v. GEO. H. NETTLETON HOME FOR AGED WOMEN.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 344

275 S.W.2d 344

365 Mo. 30

BLATT v. GEO. H. NETTLETON HOME FOR AGED WOMEN.

No. 43487.

Supreme Court of Missouri, En Banc.

Feb. 14, 1955.

Sam Mandell, Kansas City, E. E. Empie, Jr., Kansas City, Popham, Thompson, Popham, Mandell, Trusty & Green, Kansas City, of counsel, for appellant.

Clay C. Rogers, James W. Benjamin, Kansas City, Rogers, Field & Gentry, Kansas City, of counsel, for respondent.

COIL, Commissioner.

The question here involves the tort liability of a private charitable organization. The facts necessary to a disposition are disclosed by plaintiff-appellant's petition, dismissed on defendant-respondent's motion, and are these:

Defendant owns and operates for profit a four-storied building in downtown Kansas City, the total space of which is leased or rented to various tenants and in which defendant negligently maintained a common stairway for the use of tenants and their invitees. Plaintiff, a business invitee of a third-floor tenant, who had sustained injury while using the common stairway, sued for $15,000 as damages. Defendant, a pro forma corporation organized for charitable purposes, occupies no part of the building but uses all the profits from its operation for the maintenance and operation of a home for aged women.

Clearly, and it is not disputed, unless defendant is immune from liability by reason of its status as a charitable organization, plaintiff's petition does state a claim on which relief may be granted against defendant. Lambert v. Jones, 339 Mo. 677, 682, 98 S.W.2d 752, 755[1, 2].

Plaintiff argues that the doctrine of immunity from liability of charitable organizations in this state was never a correct rule of law; that it resulted from the application of an exception to the usual rules of liability, and that such an exception should never have been created except by legislative act; that present 'public policy' demands that the inherent error in the application of the exception be no longer perpetuated; and alternatively that, assuming the desirability of the rule of immunity in former times, the reasons for it have vanished and thus the rule should also vanish. From these premises it is contended that this court should be present decision overrule all the prior cases in this state which have granted immunity and hold that charitable organizations are liable in tort in accordance with the established legal principles applicable between claimants and indivicuals and private corporations not organized and operated for charitable purposes.

Plaintiff also contends that instant case is one of first impression in this state in that the question of whether immunity should be granted under facts like those here has never been adjudicated. With this we agree. And, for reasons to be set forth, we have reached the conclusion that there never has been, and that there should not now be established by court decision, a rule in this state which exempts or would exempt charitable organizations from tort liability where the activity out of which the alleged liability arose is or was whooly unconnected with, and not directly related to, the charitable enterprise for which the particular charity was organized and is operated; and that the fact, standing alone, that all the net profits from a charitable organization's commercial enterprise are used to carry on and accomplish the charitable activities and purposes of the organization, does not constitute or furnish the necessary direct connection or relation to call for the application of the immunity rule.

We examine the Missouri cases to determine what the present Missouri immunity doctrine is. The Missouri cases on the subject are cited in footnote ¹.

The Adams case denied recovery to a patient who sued a hospital (charitable organization) for burns received from hot water bottles having been allegedly negligently placed against him. The Whittaker case denied recovery to a hospital employee who sued the hospital (charitable organization) for injuries received as a result of an alleged defect in a mangle being used by the employee while doing the hospital ironing. The Nichols case denied recovery from a hospital (charitable organization) sought by a paying patient who was burned as a result of a hospital nurse using carbolic acid instead of alcohol with which to rub plaintiff's back. The Roberts case denied recovery to a paying patient from a hospital (charitable organization) where the evidence tended to establish that plaintiff was negligently burned by a hot water bottle while under the influence of an anesthetic. We shall discuss the Eads case infra. The Stedem case denied recovery from a hospital (charitable organization) by a paying patient injured when a pitcher of hot water tipped over on her due to an allegedly defective pitcher stand; and held that the fact of the existence of liability insurance was irrelevant to the question of liability.

It should be noted in connection with the cases mentioned thus far that the Stedem case did not undertake to examine into the correctness of the doctrine of exemption applicable to the hospital, but confined its ruling to the proposition that the fact of the existence of liability insurance could not create liability if liability did not exist independent of the insurance. The Nicholas case relied upon the conclusions reached in the Adams and Whittaker cases and adopted them as sound. The Roberts case denied liability for the reasons set forth in the Nicholas case.

In the Dille case, Division Two of this court said, 196 S.W.2d 616: 'Thus we are not asked to examine into the soundness of the Missouri cases dealing with the immunity of charities from tort liability, but the scope of our review is limited to, and insofar as plaintiff's contention is concerned, the case turns on, a determination of the foundation on which such immunity rests.' The court then made an extensive review of the Missouri cases for the sole purpose of determining the foundation of the immunity doctrine as it had been applied in those prior cases. That review was complete, and no purpose will be served to repeat it here. We point out, however, that the court, in the Dille case, conceded that much of the language used in the prior cases did not make clear the theory upon which those prior cases had denied liability. The review there was to resolve the doubt and the Dille case made it crystal clear that Missouri's rule of immunity as theretofore applied was based upon the proposition that broad considerations of public policy made it more desirable in the long run to prohibit the use of money donated for charitable purposes to pay damage claims. Thus, whatever language is contained in the cases prior to Dille which might have been construed as indicating some other theory as the foundation for the Missouri immunity rule, may and should be disregarded.

And so, in all the Missouri cases save Eads, to be presently discussed, the courts went no farther than to hold that hospitals organized and operated for charitable purposes, and then engaged directly in the conduct of the charitable enterprise for which they were organized, should be immune from tort liability whether that liability was asserted by a beneficiary of the charity, one who contributed to the charity by reason of paying hospital charges, or by an employee of the hospital; because, on the whole, the public would be better served by not permitting charitable donations to be used to pay damage claims. None of those cases announced or attempted to announce a rule of immunity which was to be applied except to the fact situations then before the courts and none of them promulgated an immunity doctrine broader in scope or application than was called for by the facts of each of those cases. And we repeat, in each of those cases, the charitable organization involved, a hospital, was engaged directly in the conduct of the charitable enterprise for which it had been organized and for which it was then being operated.

Thus, in so far as the cases discussed are concerned, Missouri's charitable immunity doctrine was never so absolute or so broad as to cover all situations in which the liability of charitable organizations might be asserted, irrespective of the connection between the organization's activity out of which the alleged liability arose and the charitable enterprise for which the charity was organized.

Did the Eads case change or extend the doctrine as it had been theretofore applied? Plaintiff in that case was an elevator operator-employee in defendant Y.W.C.A.'s sixstoried building in downtown Kansas City, the basement, first (except the lobby), and third floors of which were occupied and used by the Y.W.C.A. The second, fourth, and fifth floors were rented to tenants who conducted businesses unrelated to Y.W.C.A. activites. The sixth floor...