Grogan v. Com.
| Decision Date | 16 January 1979 |
| Citation | 577 S.W.2d 4 |
| Parties | Robert Gregory GROGAN, Co-Administrator of Estate of Donnie Clyde Grogan, Deceased, et al., Appellants, v. COMMONWEALTH of Kentucky, Appellee. Robert Gregory GROGAN, Co-Administrator of Estate of Donnie Clyde Grogan, Deceased, et al., Appellants, v. CITY OF SOUTHGATE, Kentucky, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
William O. Bertelsman, Bertelsman & Bertelsman, Newport, G. Wayne Bridges, Covington, for appellants.
A. J. Jolly, Jolly, Johnson, Blau & Parry, Newport, Robert F. Stephens, Atty. Gen., Victor Fox, Asst. Atty. Gen., Frankfort, for appellees.
On May 28, 1977, a fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in the City of Southgate, Kentucky, resulted in a great number of deaths and personal injuries. Shortly thereafter numerous injured parties and personal representatives of those who had lost their lives filed damage suits in the Campbell Circuit Court. In all of these actions, which in due course were consolidated, the City of Southgate and the Commonwealth of Kentucky were named as defendants. The plaintiffs now appeal from separate judgments dismissing the actions, on the pleadings, as to the city and the Commonwealth. Each of the two appeals is submitted on an agreed statement under CR 75.15 and has been briefed and argued accordingly.
We shall discuss the city case first, because its resolution disposes of the Commonwealth case without requiring consideration of the sovereign-immunity question.
It was settled in Haney v. City of Lexington, Ky., 386 S.W.2d 738, 742 (1964), that the doctrine of sovereign immunity no longer protects municipal corporations in this state from tort liability. Later, however, in City of Louisville v. Louisville Seed Company, Ky., 433 S.W.2d 638 (1968), it was made clear that cities are different creatures from natural persons, private corporations, and other suable entities, and that the fundamental bases for tort liability are not necessarily the same for all of them in all situations.
As observed in Frankfort Variety, Inc. v. City of Frankfort, Ky., 552 S.W.2d 653, 655 (1977), our most recent opinion on the subject,
Broadly speaking, the theory on which the city's liability is premised is that it failed to enforce laws and regulations, including its own, establishing safety standards for the construction and use of buildings within its corporate limits, and that its failures in this respect were a substantial factor in causing the tragedy. In other words, the charge is that the city did not enforce a law or laws designed for the safety of the public and that its taxpayers must therefore bear a loss occasioned by someone else's failure to comply with the law.
Though appellants indulge the facile assumption that under similar circumstances a private individual would be liable at common law, we do not believe that the common law, as applied to individuals, offers any reasonably comparable analogy. There is, of course, the familiar principle that one who undertakes the care of another, or of his property, even though it be voluntary and without consideration, owes him the duty of reasonable care. But in the enactment of laws designed for the public safety a governmental unit does not undertake to perform the task; it attempts only to compel others to do it, and as one of the means of enforcing that purpose it may direct its officers and employes to...
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