Kansas City v. Fee
| Decision Date | 30 June 1913 |
| Citation | 160 S.W. 537,174 Mo.App. 501 |
| Parties | KANSAS CITY, Respondent, v. JOHN FEE, Appellant |
| Court | Kansas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Jackson Criminal Court.--Hon. Ralph S. Latshaw, Judge.
AFFIRMED.
Judgment affirmed.
Gage Ladd & Small for appellant.
The school district of Kansas City is an independent public governmental corporation, and has the sole and exclusive power to provide heating apparatus, of such kind as it may determine, for its school houses, and has the sole power to employ janitors or firemen or other servants, and to prescribe their powers, duties and compensation, and therefore, necessarily, their qualifications. Hence, the city has no power or control whatever, over the heating apparatus or firemen or janitors of said school district while working therewith, and the ordinance of Kansas City was void and had no application as to the defendant or the heating apparatus he was using. R. S. 1909, secs. 10979, 10980, 10983, 10784; Waterworks Co. v. School District, 23 Mo.App 236-243; State ex inf. Lowe v. Henderson, 145 Mo. 329; School District v. School District, 184 Mo. 140; City of Milwaukee v. McGregor, 140 Wis. 35, 121 N.W. 642; City of Fulton v. Sims, 127 Mo.App. 677; Kentucky Inv't v. Louisville, 127 Mo.App. 677, 97 S.W. 402. A school district is but an arm of the State. State ex rel. v. Gordon, 231 Mo. 574.
A. F. Evans, A. F. Smith and Hunt C. Moore for respondent.
An employee of the school district of Kansas City is subject to the provisions of the Revised Ordinances of Kansas City. 1 Freund Police Power, sec. 135; Railroad v. New York, 165 U.S. 628; Railroad v. Arkansas, 219 U.S. 453-462; United States v. Bateman, 34 F. 86; United States v. Tully, 140 F. 899, 905; Sec. 9764, R. S. 1909; McQuillin Municipal Ordinances, sec. 271, 418; 3 McQuillin Municipal Corporations, sec. 899, p. 1910.
This is an appeal from a judgment of the criminal court of Jackson county, wherein appellant was, on an appeal from the municipal court, convicted of a violation of one of the ordinances of Kansas City. That ordinance provides that no person, not a fireman or engineer licensed by the city, shall be in charge of any steam boiler used for heating purposes carrying over fifteen pounds of steam to the square inch, and any person violating such provision shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not less than one dollar nor more than $ 500 and each day's violation shall be deemed a separate offense. It is admitted that defendant was, at the time of the filing of the information against him, the janitor of the Washington school, one of the public schools, in Kansas City, and as such janitor was directly in charge of its steam heating boiler which carried from twenty-five to thirty pounds of steam to the square inch, and that he was not a fireman or engineer licensed by the city as provided by said ordinance. He was arrested for violating said ordinance, was convicted in the municipal court and again in the criminal court on appeal, and now brings the case here.
The real, and the only, question presented by the defense is whether or not Kansas City has any power or authority to make any regulations governing or binding upon public school employees, when such regulations are prescribed solely in the exercise of the city's police power to provide for the health and safety of its citizens and the freedom from danger by violence of both persons and property, and when such regulations have such objects for their only end and purpose? The defendant does not state the question within these limits. He prefers to make it broader than that and raise the question whether or not the public schools of the city are subject to the government, control and domination of the city in regard to matters in general. And under the wide spreading wings of such a question he cites authorities denying the city such broad and comprehensive power, and urges them as conclusive on the question of whether the city has the narrow authority above set out. This method involves a fallacy so frequently met with as to become familiar although often buried under the cover of much legal argumentation. When stripped of every cover and disguise, the question here is found to be: Are the public schools, or rather more specifically in this case, are the employees of the public schools located within a city subject to those regulations of the city which are purely police regulations and do not involve any other limitation or control?
Our laws vest in the public school authorities the "supervision of instruction" but nowhere gives them governmental police power. [R. S. Mo. 1909, secs. 10979, 10980, 10983, 10784.] In other words, the school authorities are supreme in all matters directly, or by implication, involving the subject of education, but with the matter of governmental police regulations, having to do solely with the maintenance of public order and peace, the health, safety and freedom from violence of the citizens of the State and the protection of property from destruction by violence, the school authorities have nothing to do. And it is well for them that they do not.
On the other hand the law vests such authority over police matters in the city. [R. S. Mo. 1909, sec. 9764.] And such authority is given without restriction or exception. Within that sphere, the city has, so to speak, as exclusive authority as the school board has within the sphere of educational matters. Neither can interfere with the other in the exercise of the respective governmental functions confided to each. The work of education and everything necessary or impliedly necessary to the carrying on of the work is committed to the school board, and the city has no right to interfere with that work or direct how it shall be done; and the work of maintaining public order, establishing and enforcing police regulations which preserve the health and safety of persons and property, is committed to the city, and the school board has no right to interfere with that work, nor is it or its employees exempt from such police regulations.
It will not do to say that fining of this janitor fireman for runing a boiler without a city license is an interference with the board in its work of education. To say that the board, in order to be left wholly free to carry on its work of education, must, with its employees, be absolutely free from all matters of purely police regulation, is to say that the board cannot attend to the work of education unless it is allowed to violate, or at least pay no attention to, such regulations. The absurdity of such a statement is its own refutation. Besides, the board, by its rule No. 153, providing that "the janitor of a building heated by steam shall have an engineer's license as required by city ordinance" admits that its work of education is not interfered with by the application and enforcement of such a police regulation. The above rule is material and admissible on this ground if on no other. And, since the board makes this admission, surely it cannot lie in the mouth of this janitor to urge that the freedom of the board in the management of its schools is being interfered with by a judgment of conviction in this case.
Neither can it be denied that the ordinance in question is a pure exercise of police power and a wise and reasonable one. Nor do we understand that defendant contends for a moment that it is not. By inference, however, he contends that the qualification of the janitor fireman in charge of a steam boiler carrying more than fifteen pounds to the square inch is a matter so wholly within the sphere of education and so entirely outside of the sphere of the city's conceded police power, that it must be held that the city has no power to legislate on that qualification. On the contrary, the qualification of the one in charge of such a powerful agency capable of producing disastrous and dangerous results is not a matter within the sphere of, or pertaining to, the work of education at all, but is wholly within the matters of police regulation confided alone to the city and not to the school board. A steam boiler of such capacity, in the hands of an inexperienced and unskilled person, is likely, or at least liable to, explode not only killing and injuring the pupils of the school (who are citizens of the city) but also destroying and setting fire to the building and thereby communicating fire and danger of destruction to the persons and property of the city and of citizens adjacent thereto. To require the school employee, handling such a dangerous agency, to comply with the regulations of the city in regard thereto is no...
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