Thompson v. City of Jacksonville, C-107

• Decision Date: 04 May 1961
• Docket Number: No. C-107,C-107
• Citation: 130 So.2d 105
• Parties: Jeannette THOMPSON, Appellant, v. CITY OF JACKSONVILLE, Florida, a municipal corporation, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 105

130 So.2d 105

Jeannette THOMPSON, Appellant, v. CITY OF JACKSONVILLE, Florida, a municipal corporation, Appellee.

No. C-107.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

May 4, 1961.

Rehearing Denied May 29, 1961.

Will O. Murrell and Arthur T. Boone, Jacksonville, for appellant.

William M. Madison, Inman P. Crutchfield and Claude L. Mullis, Jacksonville, for appellee.

CARROLL, DONALD K., Judge.

The plaintiff has appealed from a final judgment entered by the Circuit Court for Duval County dismissing, without leave to amend, her second amended complaint against the City of Jacksonville, a municipal corporation.

The chief question before us on this appeal is whether such complaint sufficiently alleges a cause of action against the city.

In her said complaint the plaintiff alleges that at all times thereinafter mentioned she resided in a dwelling house at a certain address in the city of Jacksonville, occupying a bedroom in said premises, and that within thirty days after the happening of the injury alleged in her complaint she gave the city a written notice thereof as required by law. She claims damages in excess of the sum of $10,000 and demands trial by jury. The gist of her cause of action is stated in the following paragraph of the complaint:

'That at said time and place said police officers of the Police Department of said City, then and there acted in the course of their employment, carelessly and negligently broke into said premises and entered therein, and while therein searched said premises with great and negligent disregard for the plaintiff's right of privacy, which was thereby invaded, and said plaintiff was caused to suffer great mental and physical pain and suffering, humiliation and embarrassment and plaintiff claims punitive damages of defendant.'

For a better understanding of the pleading situation here we mention the fact that the original complaint and the first amended complaint filed by the plaintiff in this cause were dismissed by the Circuit Court expressly upon the authority of our decision in Middleton v. City of Ft. Walton Beach, Fla.App.1959, 113 So.2d 431, evidently on the theory that those first two complaints alleged an intentional tort. While the court in the final judgment appealed from here did not expressly state that it was relying on our Middleton decision in dismissing the second amended complaint, it seems obvious to us that that decision was the basis for the said judgment.

Our consideration of the matters involved on this appeal requires us to review the opinion of the Supreme Court of Florida in the leading case of Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, Fla.1957, 96 So.2d 130, 60 A.L.R.2d 1193, and our own opinion in Middleton v. City of Ft. Walton Beach, Fla.App.1959, 113 So.2d 431.

In the Hargrove case the Supreme Court of Florida in a scholarly opinion written by Mr. Justice Thornal reviewed a large number of previous decisions in which that court had held that a municipal corporation was not liable for the negligent acts of municipal employees. In the Hargrove decision the Supreme Court then went on to recede from the doctrine recognized and applied in those earlier cases and announced the following rule as the law in Florida:

'* * * we here merely hold that when an individual suffers a direct, personal injury proximately caused by the negligence of a municipal employee while acting within the scope of his employment, the injured individual is entitled to redress for the wrong done.'

In that case a widow filed an action for damages against a municipal corporation for the wrongful death of her husband who died of smoke suffocation after being locked in a jail which had been left unattended by a city jailer. The Circuit Court granted the city's motion to dismiss the complaint and the widow appealed. The Supreme Court reversed the judgment appealed from and remanded the cause for further proceedings. The language used by the Supreme Court in this landmark decision is so important in cases involving municipal liability for the torts of employees that we think the following lengthy quotation from the gist of the decision is warranted here:

'We therefore now recede from our prior decisions which hold that a municipal corporation is immune from liability for the torts of police officers. Affirmatively we hold that a municipal corporation may be held liable for the torts of police officers under the doctrine of respondeat superior. We think it advisable to protect our conclusion against any interpretation that would impose liability on the municipality in the exercise of legislative or judicial, or quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial, functions as illustrated in such cases as Elrod v. City of Daytona Beach, 132 Fla. 24, 180 So. 378, 118 A.L.R. 1049; and Akin v. City of Miami, Fla.1953, 65 So.2d 54, 37 A.L.R.2d 691.

'Subject to the limitations above announced, we here merely hold that when an individual suffers a direct, personal injury proximately caused by the negligence of a municipal employee while acting within the scope of his employment, the injured individual is entitled to redress for the wrong done. To support the rule we hearken back to our original Florida precedent, City of Tallahassee v. Fortune, supra . Our judicial forebears there held that where an individual suffers a special personal damage not common to the community but proximately resulting from the negligence of the municipal corporation acting through its employees, such individual is entitled to redress. We think this general rule was sound when it was announced in 1850 and it should be reestablished as the law of Florida. Within the framework of the above announced limitations this is the rule of our present opinion. In this vein, we therefore point out that instead of disregarding the rule of stare decisis, we now merely restore the original concepts of our jurisprudence to a position of priority in order to eradicate the deviations that have in our view detracted from the justice of the initial rule.'

Our decision in Middleton v. City of Ft. Walton Beach, Fla.App.1959, 113 So.2d 431, fell squarely within the exception to the rule of municipal liability as stated in the last sentence of the first paragraph quoted above from the Hargrove opinion--namely, the court's protection of its conclusion against any interpretation that would impose liability on the municipality in the exercise of judicial or quasi-judicial functions, etc. In the Middleton case, however, the appellant contended that the doctrine of respondent superior should be extended to municipal corporations so as to render them liable for the intentional torts of their agents, employees, and officers, and contended that the rationale of the Hargrove case compelled the establishment of such a doctrine. In our opinion we declared our disagreement with this contention. We here adhere to the same view, and hold again that the Hargrove doctrine of municipal liability for torts of municipal employees should not be extended to include the intentional torts of such employees.

As mentioned above, our holding in ...