Connelly v. Mayor, Etc., of City of Nashville

• Decision Date: 19 January 1898
• Citation: 46 S.W. 565
• Parties: CONNELLY et ux. v. MAYOR, ETC., OF CITY OF NASHVILLE.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

46 S.W. 565

CONNELLY et ux. v. MAYOR, ETC., OF CITY OF NASHVILLE.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

January 19, 1898.

Appeal from circuit court, Davidson county; John W. Childress, Judge.

Action by one Connelly and wife against the mayor, etc., of the city of Nashville. From a judgment sustaining a demurrer to the complaint, plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

E. A. Price and J. Washington Moore, for appellants. John B. Keeble, for appellees.

BEARD, J.

In this cause the plaintiffs seek to recover damages for a personal injury sustained by Mrs. Connelly, the result, as is alleged, of the negligence of one of the defendants' servants. The declaration avers that while Mrs. Connelly was sitting in her buggy, which was standing near the sidewalk of one of the streets of the city of Nashville, a driver of a sprinkling cart, engaged in the service of the city, negligently collided with the wheels of the buggy, so that the animal attached thereto, taking fright, in his movements overturned the buggy, and inflicted the injury complained of.

The demurrer to the plaintiffs' declaration presented, as an issue of law, that the duty which the city was discharging at the time of the accident was a public one, and that the negligence of the agent, in the course of its performance, though resulting in injury to Mrs. Connelly, was not chargeable to the city. It is insisted the trial judge was in error in sustaining this demurrer. The authorities recognize the difference between governmental duties, or those duties the municipality owes the public, and corporate or ministerial duties, in the discharge of which the individual citizen is interested. For any injury consequent upon the negligence of the municipal agent in discharging duties of the first class, the corporation is not liable, but it is otherwise as to the result of neglect in the performance of duties of the second class. It is a difficult matter, by a definition, to distinguish these duties; and it has been said that, after all, each case, as it arises, must be largely determined on its own facts. While this is true in a degree, yet it is well settled that there are certain groups of cases within which cities are, and others in which they are not, liable for the torts of their agents. For instance, a municipal corporation, as is agreed by a majority of the courts, is liable for injuries resulting from defective streets, this liability resting upon the corporate obligation to build and keep in repair its highways. Mayor, etc., v. Lasser, 9 Humph. 757. It is also liable for the negligence of its agents in those cases where the municipality...