Cracraft v. City of St. Louis Park
| Decision Date | 27 April 1979 |
| Docket Number | No. 47852.,47852. |
| Citation | 279 NW 2d 801 |
| Parties | John CRACRAFT, a minor, by his father and natural guardian, Jack Cracraft, et al., Appellants, Leon Kasper, as Trustee for the Heirs of Kenneth Kasper, et al., Appellants, v. CITY OF ST. LOUIS PARK, Respondent. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Meshbesher, Singer & Spence, Russell M. Spence, and Carol M. Grant, Minneapolis, for appellants.
Ochs, Larsen, Klimek & Olson, and Norman W. Larsen, Minneapolis, for respondent.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., Richard B. Allyn, Sol. Gen., and Kent G. Harbison, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Paul, for State of Minnesota.
David A. Singer, Thomas Wolf, President, and Gordon W. Schumaker, Chairman, Appellate Advocacy Committee, St. Paul, for Minnesota Trial Lawyers Assn.
Stanley G. Peskar, Gen. Counsel, St. Paul, for League of Minnesota Cities.
Heard before PETERSON, KELLY, and YETKA, JJ. Reheard and considered and decided by the court en banc.
This is an appeal brought by the plaintiffs Jack Cracraft, individually, and as the guardian of his minor child, John Cracraft; and Leon Kasper, individually, and as the trustee for the heirs of Kenneth Kasper, against the defendant city of St. Louis Park. This suit involves the alleged negligent failure of a city inspector to discover a violation of the municipal fire ordinance at Benilde-St. Margaret's High School, St. Louis Park, Minnesota. After argument by the parties, the trial judge granted summary judgment in favor of the city. Plaintiffs appeal from that judgment. We affirm.
On October 27, 1974, a 55-gallon drum of duplicating fluid, an extremely volatile and highly flammable liquid, ignited on the loading dock of Benilde High School. The dock is adjacent to the school's football field and is commonly used by students as a means of ingress and egress.
As a result of the explosion, three youths received first, second, and third-degree burns over their entire bodies. Two of the boys died, including Kenneth Kasper. A third boy, plaintiff John Cracraft, received severe burns over 50 percent of his body.
The city fire inspector, Gerald Hines, inspected the entire premises on September 13, 1974. This inspection was conducted pursuant to a city ordinance. The presence of a drum of duplicating fluid on the dock would be a violation of the fire code. Mr. Hines testified, in deposition, that he did not see the drum at the time of his inspection. He stated that if it was there at the time of the examination, it would have been noticed and removed.
Plaintiffs contend that the city must conduct an inspection with due care, that the city's inspection was negligently performed, and the negligence was a substantial causal factor of the injuries and damages. Defendant municipality, on the other hand, contends that it owed no duty of care for the purposes of a negligence action. Thus, the question in this case becomes: Under what conditions is a duty of care imposed on a municipality which seeks to enforce the law by inspecting for fire code violations? It is important to distinguish the issue presented by this case from confusingly similar issues. We are not concerned with the legal duties owed by municipalities as owners and operators of buildings, roadways, or other facilities.1 Nor are we concerned with the duty of a municipality to comply with its own safety codes as we were in Lorshbough v. Township of Buzzle, 258 N.W.2d 96 (Minn.1977). These duties to comply with the law are analogous to those owed by private persons, and a breach of such duties can be the basis of a lawsuit against the municipality just as it can be the basis of a lawsuit against private tortfeasors. We are, instead, considering the municipality's unique duty to enforce the law by taking steps to assure that third persons comply with the law.
To hold a municipality liable for negligently inspecting the conduct of third persons for fire code violations, plaintiffs must establish that the municipality has a common-law duty to provide a reasonable inspection. In 1972, this court decided Hoffert v. Owatonna Inn Towne Motel, Inc., 293 Minn. 220, 199 N.W.2d 158 (1972). In Hoffert, plaintiffs were guests at a motel that had been recently remodeled. The owners of the motel had submitted their proposal for improvements to the city of Owatonna. The city engineer and building inspector then examined the motel and issued a building permit. The building inspector also examined the premises during construction. Two weeks after the last inspection, a fire broke out in the motel and the plaintiffs alleged they were trapped on the second floor because of improper stairway enclosures constructed in violation of the building code.
This court affirmed the dismissal of the complaint against the city. Although recognizing that the Minnesota Legislature had abolished the doctrine of sovereign immunity as it applied to the political subdivision of the state,2 we held (293 Minn. 222, 199 N.W.2d 159):
The court went on to state (293 Minn. 223, 199 N.W.2d 160):
Because the building code ordinances did not create a duty owed to plaintiffs as individuals, they could not recover for the alleged negligence of the city's employees.
The Hoffert decision is controlling in this case. Recently, however, significant criticism has been launched against the distinction between a duty owed to the public in general (which cannot be the basis of a negligence action) and a duty owed to individual members of the public (which can be the basis of a negligence action). See, Adams v. State, 555 P.2d 235 (Alaska 1976); Coffey v. City of Milwaukee, 74 Wis.2d 526, 247 N.W.2d 132 (1976). See, generally, Note, 13 Columbia J.L. & Soc.Prob. 303; Note, 23 Loyola L.Rev. 458. The distinction, say the critics, is a relic of sovereign immunity and should be discarded upon the abolition of sovereign immunity. Plaintiffs contend that the distinction should be discarded and Hoffert should be overruled.
We disagree. By abolishing the distinction between public duty and special duty, this court would depart from vast precedent and traditional common-law principles of negligence. The distinction is not merely a relic of the verbiage used by courts in days of sovereign immunity. Instead, it is a corollary to a basic tenet of negligence law: general duties owed to the entire public rather than a specific class of persons cannot form the basis of a negligence action.3
To demonstrate that the distinction between public duty and special duty is not a doctrine unique to governmental torts, we start our analysis of the duty to enforce the law by placing municipalities on the same footing as any other person.
The common-law rule, of course, is that generally there is no duty to prevent the misconduct of a third person. As stated in Restatement, Torts (2d), § 315:
At the outset then, there is no common-law duty imposed on any individual or any municipality to inspect and correct the fire code violations of a third person unless there is a "special relation" between the parties.
If there were no additional considerations in this case, it could be concluded at this point that the defendant municipality had no duty, public or special, to inspect and correct fire code violations. There are additional considerations, however. The municipality's own ordinances require that it undertake inspections for fire code violations.4 However, such inspections are required for the purpose of protecting the interests of the municipality as a whole against the fire hazards of the person inspected. The inspections are not undertaken for the purpose of assuring either the person inspected or third persons that the building is free from all fire hazards, just as the state's issuance of a driver's license is no assurance that the licensed person will be a safe driver. Because the ordinances are designed to protect the municipality's own interests, rather than the interests of a particular class of individuals, only a "public" duty to inspect is created. It is a basic principle of negligence law that public duties created by statute cannot be the basis of a negligence action even against private tortfeasors. Restatement, Torts (2d), § 288, states in part:
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