Rhoads v. Lancaster Parking Authority

• Citation: 520 A.2d 122,103 Pa.Cmwlth. 303
• Court: Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court
• Decision Date: 22 January 1987
• Parties: Daniel RHOADS and Mary Rhoads, Appellants, v. LANCASTER PARKING AUTHORITY and City of Lancaster, Appellees.

Page 122

520 A.2d 122

103 Pa.Cmwlth. 303

Daniel RHOADS and Mary Rhoads, Appellants, v. LANCASTER PARKING AUTHORITY and City of Lancaster, Appellees.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued Sept. 11, 1986.

Decided Jan. 22, 1987.

James E. Beasley, Scott A. Bennett, Beasley, Hewson, Casey, Colleran, Erbstein & Thistle, William P. Murphy, Philadelphia, for appellants.

Allan C. Molotsky, Albert J. Schell, Jr., Philadelphia, for Lancaster Parking Authority.

Before DOYLE and BARRY, JJ., and KALISH, Senior Judge.

DOYLE, Judge.

This is an appeal by Daniel Rhoads and Mary Rhoads from two orders of the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster County granting summary judgment to Appellees, Lancaster Parking Authority and the City of Lancaster. We affirm.

In late 1966 and early 1967, the Lancaster Parking Authority (Authority) was organized pursuant to the Parking Authority Law. ¹ The Authority owns the Prince Street Parking Garage in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which it leases to the City of Lancaster (City) and in turn, staffs and operates the garage pursuant to a management contract with the City. It is alleged that on September 11, 1981 at around 2:30 in the afternoon, three shabbily dressed, intoxicated men walked up the driving ramp into the parking garage. They were noticed by James Bandy, one of the garage attendants. He yelled at them not to walk up the automobile ramp. The men responded with obscenities and continued on their way. Mr. Bandy informed James Painter, the garage manager, of the presence of the three men. Mr. Painter looked up the ramp for the men, saw nothing, and returned to the ticket booth at the garage's exit.

Shortly, thereafter, between 2:40 p.m. and 2:42 p.m., Mr. Rhoads drove his vehicle into the parking garage, received his parking ticket and proceeded to the fifth level of the garage. At about this time, a patron of the garage reported to Mr. Bandy and Mr. Painter that three men were on the fifth level of the garage causing a disturbance. As Mr. Rhoads parked his car, he was accosted by the three men who forced Mr. Rhoads into the back seat of his vehicle. Two of the assailants held him down, while the third occupied the driver's seat. Meanwhile, Mr. Painter proceeded by elevator to the fifth level to investigate the disturbance. He found nothing because the assailants were driving the Rhoads car out of the garage.

While leaving the garage in Mr. Rhoad's automobile, the assailants hit a concrete barrier. They handed Mr. Rhoad's parking ticket to Mr. Bandy. At this time, Mr. Bandy noticed two people in the back of the Rhoad's vehicle wrestling and "carrying on." Mr. Rhoad's vehicle left the garage at 2:46, four minutes after it had entered. At no time did Mr. Bandy hit the "panic button" located in his ticket booth to summon the police. Subsequently, Mr. Rhoads was blindfolded, bound, and then repeatedly beaten and stabbed by the three assailants. Mr. Rhoads was eventually thrown down a 50 foot enbankment and left for dead. His vehicle was later found in the Richmond, Virginia area. In the three years prior to the Rhoads' incident, there had been some petty vandalism and car burglaries in the garage but no assaults or any other violent crimes on the premises.

Appellants filed their complaint on June 1, 1982, alleging that the City and the Authority jointly or severally owned, possessed, maintained or controlled the Prince Street Garage; that Mr. Rhoads was a business invitee of the Appellees; that Appellees had notice of criminal activity in the garage and this assault in particular; and that Appellees negligently failed to provide adequate security for its patrons on its premises.

After extensive discovery, the trial court granted summary judgment on September 13, 1984 in favor of the City, on the ground that it had governmental immunity, and could not be sued under the "real property" exception of Section 8542(b)(3) of the Judicial Code (Code) ² because it had relinquished the care, custody and control of the garage to the Authority. On September 24, 1984, the trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the Authority on the grounds that it was a local agency and the criminal assault upon Daniel Rhoads by third parties on the Authority's premises also did not fall within the "real property" exception to governmental immunity.

Appellants appealed both orders to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, which transferred the cases to this Court. Appellants present three issues for our consideration on appeal: (1) whether the Authority is a local agency under Section 8541 of the Code ³ and therefore entitled to immunity, (2) whether the proprietary function exception to common law governmental immunity survived the statutory enactment of governmental immunity; ⁴ and (3) whether Appellants' action falls within the "real property" exception to governmental immunity.

THE AUTHORITY AS A LOCAL AGENCY

Section 8541 of the Code provides that "[e]xcept as otherwise provided in this subchapter, no local agency shall be liable for any damages on account of any injury to a person or property caused by any act of the local agency or an employee thereof or of any other person." "Local agency" is defined in Section 8501 of the Code ⁵ as "[a] government unit other than the Commonwealth government. This term includes an intermediate unit." Since "government unit" is not defined in Chapter 85, ⁶ (the chapter of the Code dealing with sovereign and governmental immunity) we turn to Section 102, the general definitional section of the Code, for guidance. ⁷ A "governmental unit" is defined there in relevant part as "[t]he General Assembly and its officers and agencies, [and] any government agency...." Section 102 further defines "Government agency" as "[a]ny Commonwealth agency or any political subdivision or municipal or other local authority...." Reading these definitions in pari materia, it is clear that the Authority is a local authority under Section 102, and hence a "local agency" under Section 8541.

This conclusion is in accord with E-Z Parks, Inc. v. Larson, 91 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 600, 498 A.2d 1364 (1985), aff'd per curiam, 509 Pa. 496, 503 A.2d 931 (1986), where the issue was the alleged tortious interference with a lease, and wherein we stated that parking authorities are local agencies for the purposes of Section 8541 of the Code. In E-Z Parks, we wrote that parking authorities, which are public bodies, corporate and politic that exercise public power as an agent of the Commonwealth, clearly meet the definition of a local agency in Section 8501. Id. at 609, 498 A.2d at 1369.

Appellants strongly urge that parking authorities do not come within the definition of "local agency" set forth in Section 8501 of the Code, that is, "[a] government unit other than the Commonwealth government," and present two arguments in support of this contention. First, they argue that when the Code was enacted in 1980 which enactment included the definition of "local agency," the legislature intended to exclude municipal authorities from the definition. Their argument is that the previous statutory governmental immunity law, viz, the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act, ⁸ specifically listed municipal authorities as a governmental body; more specifically, a political subdivision entitled to immunity, whereas, the defintion of "local agency" in Section 8501 of the Code specifically lists only intermediate units as immune. Therefore, they argue, the legislature intended to exclude municipal authorities from the definition of "local agency," and assert that the failure to specify municipal authorities in the present statute means that such bodies should be excluded from the cloak of immunity. We cannot agree.

To adopt Appellants' argument would give immunity only to intermediate units and to no other governmental unit, because all the other government units enumerated in the prior statute (except intermediate units) such as, e.g., a county, city, borough, township, and school district, would be excluded. Appellants' argument ignores the fact that when interpreting statutes, all of their terms must be given effect. See Section 1921(a) of the Statutory Construction Act of 1972, 1 Pa.C.S. § 1921(a). The phrase "government unit other than the Commonwealth government" as used in the definition of "local agency" in Section 8501 of the Code has a broad meaning. The sentence which follows that phrase, "[t]his term shall include an intermediate unit" does not necessarily limit in any way or exclude in this instance any other governmental body from the terms of the previous sentence, but merely states for purposes of clarity and to avoid uncertainty that an intermediate unit is to be included within its terms. Since we do not believe that the legislature could have intended the irrational result which would occur were we to adopt Appellant's proffered reading of the statutes, we must reject their argument. Unionville-Chadds Ford School District v. Rotteveel, 87 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 334, 487 A.2d 109 (1985).

Appellants in their second alternative argument stress that municipal authorities have a unique status in the Commonwealth's governmental scheme which justifies their non-inclusion in the definition of "local agency" in Section 8501. They contend that since municipal authorities are not part of the "Commonwealth government" by definition in Section 102 of the Code, ⁹ nor are they creatures, agents or instrumentalities of the municipalities which create them, Simon Appeal, 408 Pa. 464, 184 A.2d 695 (1962), they must be somewhere in between, and are neither the "Commonwealth government" nor a "local agency." We cannot agree; they have not "slipped between the cracks" as it were, although Appellants have presented a strong argument. Municipal authorities are independent corporate agents of the Commonwealth which exercise governmental, as well as private corporate power, in assisting the Commonwealth in meeting...