Morrison v. City of Lawrence

• Decision Date: 02 April 1902
• Citation: 63 N.E. 400,181 Mass. 127
• Parties: MORRISON v. CITY OF LAWRENCE.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

181 Mass. 127

63 N.E. 400

MORRISON v. CITY OF LAWRENCE.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Essex.

April 2, 1902

COUNSEL

J. P. Sweeney and H. R. Dow, for plaintiff.

John P Kane, for defendant.

OPINION

KNOWLTON J.

This is an action brought under Pub. St. c. 47, § 12 (St. 1898, c 496, § 9; Rev. Laws, c. 44, § 7), to recover damages for an unlawful exclusion of the plaintiff from a public school. In Spear v. Commings, 23 Pick. 224, 34 Am. Dec. 53, it was held that a teacher of a town school is not liable to an action by a parent for refusing to instruct his child, and in the opinion (which discusses our school system, and the powers and duties of school committees in cities and towns) it was said that, if the committee should refuse to permit a pupil to attend a school, it would be assumed that there was a good and sufficient cause for his rejection, inasmuch as the law will not presume that the committee would act arbitrarily and unjustly. It was therefore said that the pupil in such a case would be without remedy. Afterwards St 1845, c. 214, was enacted, which is still retained in our law without material change, giving a remedy to a child 'unlawfully excluded' from a public school. This legislation makes cities and towns liable for the possible arbitrary and willfully unjust action of a school committee in excluding a child from a school, but it does not otherwise change the powers and duties of committees, or their general relations to the schools. They still have the general charge and superintendence of all the public schools, and as public officers, so far as the performance of their duties involves the exercise of judgment and discretion, they are accountable to no higher authority. Pub. St. c. 44, § 21; Rev. Laws, c. 42, § 27. The statute under which this suit is brought says impliedly that there may be an exclusion of a pupil which is unlawful, but it does not define the illegality referred to. In Bishop v. Inhabitants of Rowley, 165 Mass. 460, 43 N.E. 191, which is the only case decided by this court in which there has been a recovery for an unlawful exclusion, it was said, in construing the statute, 'that the power of exclusion is not merely an arbitrary power to be exercised without ascertaining the facts. * * * The school committee should have given the plaintiff or his father a chance to be heard upon the facts; or, in other words, should have listened to his side of the case.' But it was also said, following previous decisions of this court, that, 'if a school committee acts in good faith in determining the facts in a particular case, its decision cannot be revised by the courts.' See Watson v. City of Cambridge, 157 Mass. 561, 32 N.E. 864. The decision in Bishop v. Inhabitants of Rowley rests upon a construction of the bill of exceptions whereby the school committee were understood to have arbitrarily refused to give the plaintiff and his father a hearing, upon request, in regard to the facts upon which his exclusion from the school was founded. In the present case a hearing was had, and the only objection to it is that the school committee refused to permit pupils of the school to be compelled to give testimony in regard to matters between themselves and the teacher and the plaintiff, although ready to receive testimony from any of them who would testify voluntarily. This was at most an error in regard to the admission of evidence. It may or may not have had an important bearing upon the hearing, but it has not been contended that the committee were acting otherwise than in good faith. Doubtless they believed that a compulsory examination of the pupils in regard to matters which they probably considered confidantial would be detrimental to the interests of the school. The decision in Bishop v. Inhabitants of Rowley does not go so far as to hold that a hearing in regard to the exclusion of a pupil from a school must be conducted with all the formalities of a trial in a court, or that a material mistake, innocently made by a school committee in conducting a hearing, will make his exclusion unlawful. So to hold would be inconsistent with the previous decisions of the court, as well as with some of the language of that case. We are therefore of opinion that there was error in the instructions on the question of liability.

We have assumed, without discussion, that the plaintiff was not precluded by the record from showing the proceedings at the hearing so far as they were pertinent. See Alvord v. Inhabitants of Town of Chester, 180 Mass. 20, 61 N.E. 263; Russell v. Inhabitants of Lynnfield, 116 Mass. 365-367.

On the question of damages the defendant presented requests for instructions as follows: '(4) That the plaintiff is not entitled to recover for the cost of his board, instruction or tuition paid at the school which he has attended since his exclusion from the Lawrence public schools, unless he has shown that he has paid for his board, instruction, or tuition out of his own property or funds; that, there being no evidence of that fact,...