Thomas v. Hospital Authority of Clarke County
| Decision Date | 28 February 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. S93A1924,S93A1924 |
| Citation | 264 Ga. 40,440 S.E.2d 195 |
| Parties | THOMAS v. HOSPITAL AUTHORITY OF CLARKE COUNTY. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Walden G. Housman, Jr., Athens, for Thomas.
Gary B. Blasingame, J. Ralph Beaird, Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Bryant, P.C., Athens, for Hosp. Authority of Clarke County.
On January 10, 1991, Brenda Thomas slipped and fell on the premises of the Hospital Authority of Clarke County (hereinafter Hospital Authority). Thomas brought an action against the Hospital Authority seeking damages for permanent injury. The trial court granted the Hospital Authority summary judgment on the grounds that Thomas' action was barred because of sovereign immunity. We reverse.
Under Art. 1, § 2, Para. 9(e) of the Georgia Constitution, "sovereign immunity extends to the state and all of its departments and agencies." Thomas argues that the Hospital Authority is not entitled to the protection afforded by the doctrine of sovereign immunity because the Hospital Authority is not the state, or a department or agency of the state. We agree.
In Hospital Auth. of Fulton County v. Litterilla, 199 Ga.App. 345, 404 S.E.2d 796 (1991), the Court of Appeals held, in part, that a hospital authority is a governmental entity entitled to the defense of sovereign immunity. In reviewing that case, this Court refused to affirm that holding, confining our review to the specific question posed in the writ of certiorari 1 and acknowledging that "there is arguable merit to the position that hospital authorities are not entitled to assert sovereign immunity." Litterilla v. Hospital Auth. of Fulton County, 262 Ga. 34, fn. 1, 413 S.E.2d 718 (1992). We now address that issue and hold that hospital authorities, because they are neither the state nor a department or agency of the state, are not entitled to the defense of sovereign immunity. Our conclusion is based on precedents of this Court and of the Court of Appeals, as well as policy considerations.
1) In earlier cases, we have applied a narrow definition in determining what constitutes the state or a political division thereof, distinguishing the state and its political subdivisions from instrumentalities created by the state to carry out various functions. 2 The Court of Appeals followed this analysis in Richmond County Hospital Auth. v. McLain, 112 Ga.App. 209, 144 S.E.2d 565 (1965). In that case, the Court noted that there is a clear distinction between a political subdivision such as a county and a corporate body such as a hospital authority, which is a creation of the county. Statutes such as those providing for hospital authorities are intended to allow a county to create public agencies having a corporate entity, so as to contract with the county, but without those powers which "are generally inherent in the concept of a political subdivision." 112 Ga.App. at 212, 144 S.E.2d 565. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals held that "neither the language of [the code section] which refers to a hospital authority as a 'body corporate and politic' nor that which assigns to it 'public and essential governmental functions' is sufficient to constitute it a political division of the State," 112 Ga.App. at 211-12, 144 S.E.2d 565, and this holding met with the approval of this Court in Bradfield v. Hosp. Authority of Muscogee County, 226 Ga. 575, 587, 176 S.E.2d 92 (1970). Further, it is irrelevant that the hospital authority is an instrumentality created by a department or agency of the state, i.e., the county. See, e.g. Toombs County v. O'Neal, 254 Ga. 390, 330 S.E.2d 95 (1985). As we said in Cox Enterprises v. Carroll City/County Hosp. Authority, 247 Ga. 39, 45, 273 S.E.2d 841 (1981), our prior holding
that a state authority is "not the State, nor a part of the State ... [but] ... a mere creature of the State, having distinct corporate entity" applies with full force to [a hospital authority] as well, after substituting "city/county" for "state." It is clearly not a municipal corporation as such, or a county, but merely their instrumentality. And it is not their instrumentality in the sense that a department or an agency might be because it is a separate corporate entity. [Cit.].
Making the suggested substitution, it is clear that a hospital authority is not only not the state or a part of the state, it is also not the county or a part of the county. In reaching its determination that a hospital authority is entitled to the protection of sovereign immunity, the Court of Appeals in Litterilla relied on the language of OCGA § 31-7-75 which characterizes the activities of a hospital authority as "essential governmental functions," but such reliance is misplaced. Since a hospital authority, though an instrumentality of government, is not, in any sense, an agency or department of the state, the nature of its function is irrelevant; it is not, by the language of the statute, entitled to the protection of sovereign immunity.
2) Policy considerations also support our conclusion that hospital authorities are not entitled to sovereign immunity. First, the functions carried on by a hospital authority are simply not those functions which the doctrine of sovereign immunity was designed to protect. One of the purposes of sovereign immunity in our country has been to allow government to go about the business of governing without the harassment of lawsuits which would unnecessarily impede the process of governing. The doctrine was accordingly applied only to those activities which could be said to constitute the process of governing, and the doctrine, applied as it was in such a narrow fashion, provided much more relief and produced far less harsh results than it has in more recent times. 3 Today, as many courts have acknowledged, government engages in a great many things that are not strictly governmental. 4 While some courts have attempted to distinguish between "governmental" and "proprietary" functions, 5 a distinction which is, as we stated above, irrelevant in this case, we believe that the operation of a hospital is not the kind of function, governmental or otherwise, entitled to the protection of sovereign immunity. The very functions performed by the Hospital Authority are performed by private hospitals and the Hospital Authority is in direct competition with these private hospitals for patients. 6 If an instrumentality of the government chooses to enter an area of business ordinarily carried on by private enterprise, i.e., engage in a function that is not "governmental," there is no reason why it should not be charged with the same responsibilities and liabilities borne by a private corporation. Nor is there any reason why those individuals who do business with that instrumentality should be accorded less protection than they would have in a facility run by a private corporation. 7
Secondly, though one purpose of the doctrine of sovereign immunity is to "preserve the protection of the public purse," Martin v. Georgia Dept. of Public Safety, 257 Ga. 300, 301, 357 S.E.2d 569 (1987), to extend the doctrine to a hospital authority would do nothing to advance this intent. Application of the doctrine of sovereign immunity has always involved the balancing of the interests of persons injured by government's wrongdoing and the...
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