Standiford v. Salt Lake City Corp.
Decision Date | 07 January 1980 |
Docket Number | No. 16122,16122 |
Citation | 605 P.2d 1230 |
Parties | Kathleen STANDIFORD, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. SALT LAKE CITY CORPORATION, Defendant and Respondent. |
Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Paul H. Liapis and Kent M. Kasting of Gustin, Adams, Kasting & Liapis, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and appellant.
Roger F. Cutler, Salt Lake City Atty., Greg R. Hawkins, Asst. City Atty., Salt Lake City, for defendant and respondent.
Plaintiff, Kathleen Standiford, appeals from a lower court's dismissal of her complaint against defendant, Salt Lake City Corporation (hereinafter "City"), for damages she alleges she sustained on a golf course owned by the City. The trial court dismissed her complaint on the grounds that the operation of the golf course was a governmental function and that the defendant was immune from liability pursuant to the Utah Governmental Immunity Act, § 63-30-1 Et seq., U.C.A. (1953), as amended. The immediate issue on appeal is whether the operation of this golf course is a governmental function for which the City is immune from tort liability; a larger and more important issue is whether this Court should retain the traditional governmental-proprietary analysis in deciding governmental immunity cases. The order of the trial court is reversed.
On September 5, 1977, the plaintiff paid her fee to golf at the Nibley Golf Course which is owned, operated, and maintained by the City. As she was walking down the left side of the fairway, the plaintiff stepped into an unmarked, unguarded, and grass-covered hole, fracturing her right leg and ankle. The hole housed a sprinkler head and was approximately one foot deep. On September 12, 1977, plaintiff filed a notice of her claim against the City in accordance with the provisions of the Utah Governmental Immunity Act. The City denied liability on this claim.
On September 22, 1978, plaintiff commenced this action. In response, the City filed a motion to dismiss on the ground that the operation of the golf course constitutes a governmental function for which the City is immune from suit. After hearing argument by both parties and considering their respective memoranda, the trial court held that the decision of this Court in Jopes v. Salt Lake County, 9 Utah 2d 297, 343 P.2d 728 (1959), controlled and dismissed the complaint with prejudice.
In Jopes, the plaintiff sustained injuries when he tripped over a cement abutment in the clubhouse of a golf course owned and operated by Salt Lake County. This Court affirmed a directed verdict in favor of the defendant on the ground, Inter alia, that the county was immune from liability because operation of the golf course is a governmental, as opposed to a proprietary, function. In reaching this result, the court relied on Ramirez v. Ogden City, 3 Utah 2d 102, 279 P.2d 463 (1955), which held that Ogden City was immune from tort liability for injuries sustained by the plaintiff in the Ogden Wall Street Community Center on the ground the operation of the Center was a governmental function. The Court set forth the following considerations to be weighed in deciding whether a function is governmental or proprietary:
The most general test of governmental function relates to the nature of the activity. It must be something done or furnished for the general public good, that is, of a "public or governmental character", such as the maintenance and operation of public schools, hospitals, public charities, public parks or recreational facilities. In addition to the above mentioned general test these supplemental ones are also applied: (a) whether there is special pecuniary benefit or profit to the city and (b) whether the activity is of such a nature as to be in real competition with free enterprise. (3 Utah 2d at 105, 279 P.2d at 465.)
Applying this test to the facts in Ramirez, the Court concluded that the community center was a governmental function. Likewise, in Jopes, supra, the Court applied this test and held that the operation of a golf course was an exercise of a governmental function. The Court based its decision on the grounds that no pecuniary benefit inured to the county and that the golf course was not in competition with private enterprise. The Court also noted that "(t)he operation of golfing facilities does not seem to be adapted to successful private enterprise," Id., 9 Utah 2d at 301, 343 P.2d at 730.
Three decisions of this Court which used the same test to determine whether the injury grew out of a governmental or proprietary function, from the point of view of result and common sense, are irreconcilable with Jopes. See Griffin v. Salt Lake City, 111 Utah 94, 176 P.2d 156 (1947); Burton v. Salt Lake City, 69 Utah 186, 253 P. 443 (1926); and Greenhalgh v. Payson, Utah, 530 P.2d 799 (1975). Both Griffin and Burton held that the operation of a swimming pool by a city is a proprietary function. Relying on the earlier Burton decision, the Court in Griffin determined that the mere fact a fee is charged or that a municipality may incur a deficit in the operation of some enterprise in competition with private enterprise does not necessarily change it from a proprietary activity to a governmental activity. The Court stressed that this recreational activity was operated as an enterprise apparently in competition with private business, that the admission fee evidenced its competitive character, and that the recreational activity could likely be operated as successfully in private ownership as in municipal ownership.
The third decision which is inconsistent with Jopes is Greenhalgh v. Payson City, Utah, 530 P.2d 799 (1975), in which this Court concluded that the ownership, maintenance, and operation of a hospital by Payson City was a proprietary activity. 1 Greenhalgh applied the same test as did Jopes, Ramirez, Griffin, and Burton to determine the nature of the activity:
A primary (factor to be considered) is whether the activity is something which is done for the general public good and which is generally regarded as a public responsibility. Coupled with this, other matters considered are whether there is any special pecuniary benefit to the City; and also, whether it is of such a nature as to be in competition with free enterprise. (530 P.2d at 801.)
The Utah Governmental Immunity Act, § 63-30-1 Et seq., which became effective July 1, 1966, defines neither "governmental function" nor "proprietary function." Indeed, the Act does not use the term "proprietary function"; it simply retains tort immunity for some governmental entities, subject to broad statutory exceptions, for injuries resulting from a "governmental function." Section 63-30-3, as amended by the 1978 Legislature, 2 reads as follows:
Except as may be otherwise provided in this act, all governmental entities are immune from suit for any injury which results from the exercise of a Governmental function, governmentally-owned hospital, nursing home, or other governmental health care facility. (Emphasis added.)
It has been stated in scholarly analyses that the Legislature designed this statutory scheme to allow the courts flexibility and adaptability in fashioning consistent and rational limits to governmental immunity. To that end, the Legislature intended the courts to have the power to restrict the scope of governmental immunity. See, generally, Note, The Utah Governmental Immunity Act: An Analysis, 1967 Utah L.Rev. 120; Van Alstyne, Governmental Tort Liability: A Decade of Change, 1966 U. of Ill.L. Forum 919. As Professor Van Alstyne stated, Utah's Governmental Immunity Act was intended to ". . . induce (the courts) to produce sounder, more imaginative, and more rationally principled decisions in this field than in the past." Id., at 970.
Originally, the proprietary-governmental distinction was created as a device to limit the harsh results produced by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The doctrine operated on the basis that a public entity should be liable for the torts it committed in the exercise of a proprietary function but not for those committed in the exercise of a governmental function. See Gillmor v. Salt Lake City, 32 Utah 180, 89 P. 714 (1907); Sehy v. Salt Lake City, 41 Utah 535, 126 P. 691 (1912); Alder v. Salt Lake City, 64 Utah 568, 231 P. 1102 (1924); Rollow v. Ogden City, 66 Utah 475, 243 P. 791 (1926); Niblock v. Salt Lake City, 100 Utah 573, 111 P.2d 800 (1941). 3 The distinction is, however, "one of the most unsatisfactory known to the law," Davis, Administrative Law, Ch. 9, "Tort Liability of Governments and of Officers," at 179.
Justice Wolfe discussed the "obscurity of the line between governmental and proprietary functions" in his dissenting opinion in Bingham v. Board of Education of Ogden City, 118 Utah 582, 594, 223 P.2d 432, 439 (1950), wherein he stated that
. . . at bottom the distinction (is) traditional rather than natural or characteristic and . . . the distinction in the rapid growth of welfare for which cities engaged in proprietary functions as distinguished from protective or governmental functions, (is) fast fading out because of increasing impracticability of logically maintaining them.
See also separate opinions of Justice Wolfe in Lehi City v. Meiling, 87 Utah 237, 48 P.2d 530 (1935), and Husband v. Salt Lake City, 92 Utah 449, 69 P.2d 491 (1937).
A majority of the United States Supreme Court in Indian Towing Co., Inc. v. United States, 350 U.S. 61, 76 S.Ct. 122, 100 L.Ed. 48 (1955), called the proprietary-governmental dichotomy a "quagmire that has long plagued the law of municipal corporations."
A comparative study of the cases . . . will disclose an irreconcilable conflict. More than that, the decisions in each of the States are disharmonious and disclose the inevitable chaos when courts try to apply a rule of law that is inherently unsound. (350 U.S. at 65, 76 S.Ct. at 124.)
The "quagmire" to which the Supreme Court referred in 1955 has not improved with age. A survey of cases in this...
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