Susie Tyrrell v. District of Columbia
| Decision Date | 06 March 1917 |
| Docket Number | No. 54,54 |
| Citation | 61 L.Ed. 557,37 S.Ct. 361,243 U.S. 1 |
| Parties | SUSIE A. TYRRELL, as Administratrix of the Estate of Conrad E. Tyrrell, Deceased, Petitioner, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Levi H. David and Alexander Wolf for petitioner.
Messrs. Conrad H. Syme and Percival H. Marshall for respondent.
We state only so much of the case as is essential to an understanding of the disposition which we are constrained to make of it.
The action was commenced in May, 1912, by the petitioner as administratrix of the estate of her husband, to recover from the District of Columbia, as a municipal corporation, damages suffered as the result of his wrongful death in September, 1911. Briefly, it was alleged that the District had contracted to make an addition to a school building to it belonging, known as the McKinley Manual Training School, and to put in order and adjust the boilers in the basement of the old building, and while the deceased was engaged under a subcontractor in doing the latter work, he was killed by an explosion of illuminating gas which had escaped from the gas pipes which were in the basement. It was alleged that the gas had been permitted to escape and remain in the basement through the neglect and wrongful conduct of the municipality or its agents. The averments as to the negligence of the municipality both in permitting the escape of the gas and as to allowing it to remain after notice of the dangerous condi- tion, and as to the absence of neglect on the part of the plaintiff's intestate, were ample. There was a subsequent amendment to the petition, alleging facts which, it was averred, established that the conduct of the District as to the escape and failure to remove the gas was equivalent to the creation by it of a public nuisance. The defense was a general denial and a special plea setting up a release on the part of the plaintiff, which latter, on demurrer, was stricken out. There was a verdict and judgment in favor of the plaintiff, and an appeal was taken by the defendant municipality. The court of appeals reversed the judgment and remanded, with directions to grant a new trial, one member of the court dissenting. The appellee alleging that the case in her favor could not be bettered at a new trial, asked that a final judgment be entered, upon the theory that the case would be then susceptible of review in this court on error. On the refusal of this prayer, a petition for certiorari was here presented.
The basis asserted for the application for certiorari was that the court below, disregarding a decisive line of decisions by this court holding that a municipality, the District of Columbia, was responsible for positive torts committed by its servants or agents in the course of their employment, under the application of the rule respondeat superior, had mistakenly decided that such decisions were not controlling because that principle had no application when the servants or agents of a municipality represented it in the discharge of duties which were governmental or public in character, as contradistinguished from mere municipal duties,—a ruling from which it was deduced that, in the former situation, a wrong suffered by an individual, however grievous, was not susceptible of...
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