Aboy, Vidal & Co. v. People

21 P.R. 268
Supreme Court of Puerto Rico·Decided July 30, 1914·No. No. 1149·Published

Opinion

'Me. Justice Hutchison

delivered the opinion of the court.

[269]*269This action was brought under section 32 of an act entitled “An Act to reorganize the Sanitation Service,” approved March 14, 1912, which reads in part as follows:

“Section 32. — That every person whose property may have been unjustly or illegally destroyed or injured by the enforcement of any order, regulation, ordinance, or by any action taken by the Service of Sanitation, or by its employees or agents exempt from personal liability, may maintain the appropriate action against the Government of Porto Bico for the recovery of proper damages; * # ” ,

No question is raised as to the authority of the Director of Sanitation to order the destruction of the property, for loss of which damages are now sought to be recovered, if such destruction at the time of such order was, in fact, necessary as an emergency measure in time of epidemic to abate a public nuisance and remove a real menace to the. public health. Indeed, the only question before us, as shown by appellant’s brief and as was admitted in the oral argument of the case, is whether or not upon the whole evidence under the pleadings plaintiff was entitled to a judgment for damages as having shown that a nuisance did not, in fact, exist, or, if it did, that the abatement thereof might have been accomplished by less drastic means, and, consequently, an abuse'of discretion in the exercise of quasi-judicial powers upon the part of the Director of Sanitation in arbitrarily and unnecessarily and, therefore, “unjustly” and “illegally” ordering the destruction of plaintiff’s property; or, to state The concrete proposition more succintly, whether or not the buildings destroyed were, in fact, in such condition as would, under all the circumstances, justify such extreme measures as those adopted by the Director of Sanitation.

The court below, after denying a motion for nonsuit and hearing all the evidence, finally concluded that the said motion should have been sustained and, holding that while the. evidence for the defense wa's, not altogether satisfactory',, plaintiff’s case had not been sufficiently strengthened thereby [270]*270to overcome the legal presumption in favor of the regularity and propriety of the official action in question, dismissed the complaint.

In the view we take of the case, after a very careful consideration of the whole record, the various questions as to the weight that should properly be given to such legal presumption and the extent to which the latter may have influenced the court below and should influence this court in its Ponsi deration of the evidence, are not of vital importance and, in fact, may, for the purposes of this opinion, be entirely eliminated from our consideration.

A bare. statement of the evidence adduced upon the trial will, we think, suffice without further argument to show quite clearly that the prompt action of the health authorities, confronted as they were at the time of the order complained of with a no less serious problem than the combating and stamping out of an epidemic of bubonic plague, and dealing, as they were, with buildings of the kind and character described by witnesses both for plaintiff and defendant, located within the first and most seriously infected locality attacked by the dread disease, was not only both just and legal but highly commendable and most meritorious. The very nature of the question involved, however, reqiiires that we set forth somewhat more fully than usual the facts disclosed by the record.

Eliminating all reference to values, estimates going to the measure of damages and other matter immaterial to the main issue involved, the pleadings and the testimony may be briefly summarized as follows.:

The complaint alleges that plaintiff, on July 28, 1912, and prior thereto, was the owner of houses Nos. 21 and 23, respectively, San Agustín Street, Puerta de Tierra, a ward of the municipality of San Juan; that upon July 25, 1912, plaintiff was notified by the Director of Sanitation that it was necessary that the said houses should be destroyed and that the-lumber of which the- same were constructed should be [271]*271'caused to disappear within the period of two days after the date of such notice as constituting a menace to the public health; that by virtue of said notice the said houses were destroyed and the lumber of which they were constructed was caused to disappear; that two months prior to the order above referred to plaintiff was required by a previous ’order of the Department of Health to spend the sum of $500 in repairs upon the said houses and that the latter were in a g’ood state of preservation, the destruction thereof being unjust and illegal.

Defendant, after the usual admissions and denials, answered that the houses described in the complaint were in a most ruinous condition, the lumber and other material of which the same were built being absolutely rotten, and in the month of July, 1912, constituted a public nuisance that threatened the health of the community; that in June, 1912, the existence of bubonic plague in the Island of Porto Rico, and especially in the municipality of San Juan and its wards, was officially declared, and the Department of Health began the task of exterminating rats as the carrying agent of the plague; that during the months of June, July and August of the said year the ward of Puerta de Tierra, and especially from Stops 2% to 3%, the very neighborhood where the houses in question were situated, was the locality where rats existed and were found in the greatest number and where the greatest number of persons was falling and fell victims to the disease, twenty-four cases of plag*ue having been recorded from June 1 to August 28 of the said year, thus •demonstrating the existence of a great number of rats infected with the plague bacilli throughout the said district; that the houses Nos. 21 and 23 described in the complaint were situated in San Agustín Street, Stop 3%, Puerta de Tierra, and that in these houses, during the months of June and July, rats were found in great numbers, and that in the month of July the said houses were disoccupied, not only because of the large number of rats that took refuge in the [272]

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