Finan v. City of Cumberland

• Decision Date: 24 March 1928
• Docket Number: 65.
• Parties: FINAN v. MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF CUMBERLAND.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

141 A. 269

154 Md. 563

FINAN v. MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF CUMBERLAND.

No. 65.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

March 24, 1928

Appeal from Circuit Court, Allegany County, in Equity; Albert A Doub, Judge.

"To be officially reported."

Suit by Thomas B. Finan against the Mayor and City Council of Cumberland. From a decree for defendants, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Argued before BOND, C.J., and URNER, ADKINS, OFFUTT, DIGGES, PARKE and SLOAN, JJ.

Richard F. McMullen, of Cumberland, for appellant.

William C. Walsh and Charles Z. Heskett, both of Cumberland, for appellees.

BOND C.J.

This case presents a question of the validity of an issue of bonds by the mayor and city council of Cumberland under the authority of an Act of Assembly of 1927, c. 411. The act directs specifically that $100,000 of the proceeds of sale of the bonds be advanced to the Allegany Hospital of Sisters of Charity, a private eleemosynary corporation which conducts a general hospital in the city, and it is questioned whether power can validly be given to the city to appropriate or advance public funds to such a corporation for its purposes. A total issue of $500,000 is provided for in the act, and the proceeds of sale of $400,000 are to be devoted to the erection and maintenance of a municipal hospital in Cumberland; the remaining $100,000 to be advanced to the Allegany Hospital as stated. The advance is, by the terms of the act, to be for the purpose of further hospitalization in or near the city of Cumberland, the fund to be used for the erection of buildings, and for additions and improvements and the act provides that the money so advanced is to be returned upon demand in the event that the corporation shall within twenty years voluntarily relinquish the work of hospitalization in or near Cumberland.

That the use of public funds in the erection or maintenance of a general hospital by a governmental agency directly would be use for a proper, public purpose, there can be little if any doubt. In University of Maryland v. Williams, 9 Gill & J. 365, 397 (31 Am. Dec. 72), "a hospital created and endowed by the government for general purposes of charity" is given as an illustration of a public corporation: and in St. Mary's Industrial School v. Brown, 45 Md. 310, 333, it was recognized that under an express provision in its charter Baltimore city had power to erect or establish houses of correction or hospitals. No dispute of the propriety of that use under legislative sanction was before the court in those cases. For many years there has been general statutory authority given to municipal and county authorities in Maryland to provide hospitals or temporary places for the reception of the sick. Code, art. 43, § 62; and see article 44. And, during a large part of the existence of the state government, hospitals of various kinds have been maintained here by governmental agencies, and it has generally been regarded and treated as a normal governmental activity. What is a public purpose for which public funds may be expended is not a matter of exact definition; it is almost entirely a matter of general acceptation. Savings & Loan Ass'n v. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655, 22 L.Ed. 455; Green v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 233, 240, 40 S.Ct. 499, 64 L.Ed. 878; Milheim v. Moffatt Tunnel Dist., 262 U.S. 710, 719, 43 S.Ct. 694, 67 L.Ed. 1194; Gray, Limitations of Taxing Power, § 259. And in general acceptation and practice, the erection and maintenance of a hospital is regarded as a use of funds for a public purpose. In most of the large cities of America and continental Europe, it seems, hospitals are maintained by municipalities. Encyc. Britt. "Hospital." And all decisions in other states of which we have knowledge agree in treating the use as public. Battle v. Willcox, 128 S.C. 500, 505, 122 S.E. 516; Associated Sanatorium v. James, 144 Ky. 314, 138 S.W. 377; Tuberculosis Hospital v. Peter, 253 Mo. 520, 161 S.W. 1155, Ann. Cas. 1915C, 310. Indeed, the validity of the appropriation, under the present act, of $400,000 for a municipal hospital, is not questioned; it is only the furtherance of such a public purpose by appropriating money to a private general hospital that is in dispute. The Allegany Hospital of Sisters of Charity is undoubtedly a private corporation, for it was regularly organized as such, elects its own managers, and is in no way subject to public authority or control. University of Md. v. Williams, supra; St. Mary's Ind. School v. Brown, 45 Md. 310, 329. Its work is in large part charitable, but it also takes pay patients, as all economically conducted hospitals do. The trial court came to the conclusion, after an exhaustive consideration of the questions raised, that the appropriation to it was valid; and this court has come to the same conclusion.

The objection to the appropriation is based mainly on the opinion in the case of St. Mary's Ind. School v. Brown, supra. In that case, however, the question decided was whether the mayor and city council of Baltimore might, merely under their general powers to further such objects, do so indirectly by paying their funds over to the St. Mary's Industrial School and other agencies as channels of expenditure for those objects, instead of doing so directly, by their own public agencies. As Chief Judge Alvey stated them, the contentions in support of appropriations to the agencies were...