State ex rel. Cass Medical Center v. Mason

• Decision Date: 16 October 1990
• Docket Number: No. 72563,72563
• Citation: 796 S.W.2d 621
• Parties: STATE ex rel. CASS MEDICAL CENTER, Relator, v. Honorable Donald L. MASON, Judge, Circuit Court, Jackson County, Respondent.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 621

796 S.W.2d 621

STATE ex rel. CASS MEDICAL CENTER, Relator, v. Honorable Donald L. MASON, Judge, Circuit Court, Jackson County, Respondent.

No. 72563.

Supreme Court of Missouri En Banc.

Oct. 16, 1990.

Ronald R. McMillin, R. Max Humphreys, Jefferson City, for relator.

Michael W. Manners, Independence, for respondent.

HIGGINS, Judge.

Cass Medical Center, Inc., a hospital organized under sections 205.160-205.379, RSMo 1986, and owned by Cass County, Missouri, seeks to prohibit Judge Mason from proceeding to trial on an underlying negligence claim against the Center in Herschel Young, plaintiff, v. Lee V. Ludwig, M.D., et al., defendants, CV88-16942 in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri. This Court issued a preliminary writ of prohibition; that ruling is now made absolute.

This proceeding arises from the institution of medical malpractice and wrongful death claims against seven health care providers. Plaintiff Herschel Young's second amended petition, filed on August 16, 1989, prays damages for the death of his wife, which occurred September 25, 1986; Count IV charged the Center with medical negligence in the death of his wife.

On September 2, 1989, the Center filed its motion for summary judgment maintaining that as a county hospital organized pursuant to sections 205.160-205.379, it is immune "not only ... from judgment but also ... from suit," State ex rel. Missouri Department of Agriculture v. McHenry, 687 S.W.2d 178, 181 (Mo. banc 1985); State ex rel. Barthelette v. Sanders, 756 S.W.2d 536, 539 (Mo. banc 1988), under the prescript of sovereign immunity. Judge Mason denied the Center's motion for summary judgment; the Court of Appeals, Western District, denied the Center's petition for a writ prohibiting Judge Mason from exercising jurisdiction over the Center.

The Center purchased a Hospital Professional Liability Insurance policy. Policy number GLA 09692 covered the period from September 1, 1985, to September 1, 1986; policy number GLA 09757 covered the period from September 1, 1986, to September 1, 1987. Both policies carried the same endorsement, Endorsement Number 7 and Endorsement Number 8, respectively, to confine the coverage provided by the policies to: (1) claims attributed to a dangerous condition of the Center's property; (2) claims attributed to a Center's agent's operation of a motor vehicle within the course of the agent's employment; and, (3) claims attributed to Center employees who are not covered by official immunity (nurses, technicians, interns, and nurses' aides).

Section 537.600.1(1) and (2), RSMo 1986, state that the doctrine of sovereign immunity is "in full force and effect" and waive sovereign immunity for injuries resulting from the operation of motor vehicles and the condition of an entity's property. Neither situation emerges in this case. Section 537.600.2, RSMo 1986, provides:

The express waiver of sovereign immunity in the instances specified in subdivisions (1) and (2) of subsection 1 of this section are absolute waivers of sovereign immunity in all cases within such situations whether or not the public entity was functioning in a governmental or proprietary capacity and whether or not the public entity is covered by a liability insurance for tort.

Section 537.610.1, RSMo 1986, states:

The commissioner of administration, through the purchasing division, and the governing body of each political subdivision of this state ... may purchase liability insurance for tort claims made against the state or the political subdivision, but the maximum amount of such coverage shall not exceed eight hundred thousand dollars for all claims arising out of a single occurrence and shall not exceed one hundred thousand dollars for any one person in a single accident or occurrence ... and no amount in excess of the above limits shall be awarded or settled upon. Sovereign immunity for the state of Missouri and its political subdivisions is waived only to the maximum amount of and only for the purposes covered by such policy of insurance purchased pursuant to the provisions of this section....

The legislature enacted section 537.600.1 in response to Jones v. State Highway Commission, 557 S.W.2d 225 (Mo. banc 1977), which abrogated the common law doctrine of sovereign immunity for tort claims in Missouri. In Bartley v. Special School District of St. Louis County, 649 S.W.2d 864 (Mo. banc 1983), this Court held that Jones was no longer the law because:

Section 537.600 states that the doctrine of sovereign immunity as it existed at common law in Missouri ... remains in full force and effect. Prior to that date, sovereign immunity was the rule, not the exception, and it must be inferred from the words and the structure of this statutory pronouncement that the legislature intended to reenact sovereign immunity as the rule: for the proposition begins and ends with the independent clause stating that sovereign immunity is in full force and effect. The conclusion reached is that the legislative intent was not to carve out legislative exceptions to what under Jones became a judicial abrogation of sovereign immunity, but was, rather, to overrule Jones and to carve out limited exceptions to a general rule of immunity.

Id. at 868. This Court continued its countenance of this general rule of immunity, Findley v. City of Kansas City, 782 S.W.2d 393, 395 (Mo. banc 1990), and the application of governmental immunity to a suit against a county hospital for medical negligence is not an open question. Gavan v. Madison Memorial Hospital, 700 S.W.2d 124, 127 (Mo.App.1985).

The Center contends that sections 537.600.1(1) and (2) and 537.610.1, read together, proclaim that immunity does not exist for county hospitals when the claim results from a dangerous condition of property or the operation of motor vehicles and that a county hospital may purchase insurance, but if the insurance limits are more than the amount set in section 537.610.1, sovereign immunity still protects the hospital from any liability above those amounts. The Center also maintains it had no liability insurance covering negligence suits against the entity itself, and the applicability of sovereign immunity pursuant to section 537.600 is not dependent on the presence or absence of insurance. Respondent submits that the Center's motion for summary judgment was denied because it had purchased liability insurance; hence, the presence of...