Central Hosp. for Insane v. Adams

• Decision Date: 22 March 1916
• Citation: 183 S.W. 1032,134 Tenn. 429
• Parties: CENTRAL HOSPITAL FOR INSANE v. ADAMS.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

183 S.W. 1032

134 Tenn. 429

CENTRAL HOSPITAL FOR INSANE v. ADAMS.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

March 22, 1916

Appeal from Chancery Court, Wilson County; J. W. Stout, Chancellor.

Action by the Central Hospital for the Insane against A. A. Adams guardian. Decree for complainant in part, and it appeals. Modified to allow recovery for the whole amount sued for, and remanded to enforce the recovery.

Jno. R Aust and W. R. Chambers, both of Nashville, for appellant.

A. A Adams, of Lebanon, for appellee.

FANCHER J.

This suit was instituted by the Central Hospital for the Insane against A. A. Adams, guardian, to recover compensation for keeping defendant's ward, who is a lunatic, as an inmate of said hospital for the insane. A portion of the account is not within six years prior to the bringing of suit, and the defendant pleads the statute of limitations on that portion of the account. Complainant takes the position that the hospital for the insane is an agency of the state, and as such no statute of limitations will run against it.

The authorities in the main concur in holding that local public corporations, such as municipalities, counties, and school districts, are amenable to the statute of limitations with regard to property or contract rights which the corporation claims for its own convenience as a corporation. In such cases it is held not to represent the sovereign, but only itself and the parties directly or locally interested.

But in cases where it represents the whole people, such as the use of streets, squares, parks, etc., which have been dedicated to the public, many authorities hold that the statute of limitations will not apply, and this is the rule in Tennessee. Memphis v. Looney, 9 Baxt. 130; Dillon on Municipal Corporations, vol. 2, § 533.

In an action by school directors of a township having the custody, care, and title of all schools, and schoolhouse sites, to recover in ejectment possession of school property, it was held that the people of the state in general have no interest in common with the inhabitants of a school district, in the schoolhouse site or the proceeds of it. Brown v. Trustees of Schools, 224 Ill. 184, 79 N.E. 579, 115 Am. St. Rep. 146, 8 Ann. Cas. 96. This case holds as does the court in Memphis v. Looney, supra, that statutes of limitation do not run against counties and municipalities in matters respecting strictly public rights as distinguished from private and local rights.

The same doctrine is announced in 25 Cyc. 1009. The author there goes on further to say:

"Public corporations, such as lunatic asylums or school districts, are, when clothed with capacity to sue and be sued, amenable to the plea of the statute of limitations."

On that subject the text cites the case of McClanahan v. Western Lunatic Asylum, 88 Va. 466, 13 S.E. 977, and Western Lunatic Asylum v. Miller, 29 W.Va. 326, 1 S.E. 740, 6 Am. St. Rep. 644. These two cases involve the direct question, and it was held that the asylum, being a corporation an organized legal entity and personalty in law, with power to sue and be sued, plead and be impleaded, was amenable to all legal defenses which pertain to private persons.

In the Virginia case, the court cited Bank of the United States v. Planters' Bank of Georgia, 9 Wheat. 904, 6 L.Ed. 244, holding that the state of Georgia, by giving the bank the capacity to sue and be sued, stripped itself of its sovereign character so far as respected the transactions of the bank, and waived all the privileges of that character, though the state held an interest in the bank.

In the West Virginia case the law applicable is stated as follows:

"Public corporations, whether they are municipal or mere agencies of the state, are all more or less branches of the government and necessarily clothed with attributes and incidents of sovereignty, yet when they are clothed with the capacity to sue and be sued, to have a common seal, to take and hold property and transact business, they are governed by the same laws, rules and regulations and subject to the same limitations that natural persons are, except so far as they may be exempted or relieved by positive law."

McClanahan v. Western Lunatic Asylum, supra, was overruled in Eastern State Hospital v. Graves, 105 Va. 151, 52 S.E. 837, 3 L. R. A. (N. S.) 746, 8 Ann. Cas. 701, holding that the hospital, being a mere agency of the state, owned and controlled by it, all charges imposed upon its inmates or their estates for taking care of and maintaining them are for the benefit of the state, and, when collected, go to the support of the hospital as much as the money appropriated out of the public treasury. If not collected, the loss falls wholly upon the state; and, if there is a recovery, it will be for the benefit of the state and the state alone, not for the benefit of the directors, nor for the benefit of any subordinate division of the state, but for the whole people--the state at large.

The decision followed Maia v. Eastern State Hospital, 97 Va. 507, 34 S.E. 617, 47...