Mascaro v. Youth Study Center

492 A.2d 786, 89 Pa. Commw. 388, 1985 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 1033
CourtCommonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMay 22, 1985
DocketAppeal, No. 21 T.D. 1984
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 492 A.2d 786 (Mascaro v. Youth Study Center) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mascaro v. Youth Study Center, 492 A.2d 786, 89 Pa. Commw. 388, 1985 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 1033 (Pa. Ct. App. 1985).

Opinion

Opinion bv

Judge Rogers,

Kenneth Masearo and Michelle Mascaro, for themselves and in behalf of two minor children, sued the City of Philadelphia (City), its Youth Study Center (Center), and Wilson Goode, formerly the City’s Managing Director, in trespass for damages for personal injuries inflicted in assaults upon them by an escaped inmate of the Center. They here appeal from judgment on the pleadings entered by the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County against them and in [390]*390favor of the appellees, defendants below. To lighten the burden of reading this, we will refer to the appellants here as the plaintiffs and the appellees as the defendants.

The plaintiffs alleged by complaint that Claude Opher escaped from the Center, entered their home, bound and gagged the parents and one child, and raped the other child. The negligent acts charged to the defendants were that they failed in their duty to supervise, that is confine, Opher who had a known propensity for escaping, and that they failed properly to maintain the locks, windows, and doors of the Center, enabling Opher to escape. Mr. Goode is alleged to have been negligent by issuing a directive providing that the Center’s detainees including Opher should no longer be required to wear orange uniforms. The plaintiffs charged in general terms that the acts of the City and Center employees, including Mr. Goode, constituted willful misconduct.

By Answer, the defendants effectively denied the plaintiffs’ allegations of negligence and by New Matter invoked the affirmative defenses of governmental and official immunity conferred by 42 Pa. C. S. §§8541-8564, which we will refer to generally as the Act.

The plaintiffs by Reply to New Matter, noted that the defenses advanced by the defendants based on the Act were conclusions of law requiring no reply.

The defendants filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings.

The trial court judge held that the alleged failure to provide adequate supervision of Opher was not an act excepted from the immunity conferred upon the defendants by the Act, granted the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, and dismissed the complaint.

The Act at Section 8541 provides that, subject to exceptions, a local agency shall not be liable for dam[391]*391ages on account of an injury to a person or property caused by an act of the agency or its employees. The eight exceptions to this grant of immunity are found at Section 8542(b). However, one seeking to surmount the bar of immunity by recourse to the exceptions must, pursuant to Section 8542(a)(1) and (2), satisfy the conditions (1) that his injuries occurred as the result of acts for which damages would be recoverable under common law or a statute creating a cause of action and (2) that his injuries were caused by negligent acts of the local agency or its employees acting within the scope of their duties with respect to one of the categories of waiver.

With respect to the plaintiffs ’ allegation of the defendants ’ failure to supervise, we observe that Section 319 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts (1965) states the common law as follows:

One who takes charge of a third person whom he knows or should know to be likely to cause bodily harm to others if not controlled is under a duty to exercise reasonable care to control the third person to prevent him from doing such harm.

However, the breach of this duty is not among the eight exceptions to immunity described in Section 8542(b) of the Act; hence, the defendants City and Center are not answerable for failing to supervise, that is confine, Qpher. Concerning the same charge against Wilson Goode, we observe that Section 8545 of the Act provides that an employee of a local agency is liable for damages only to the same extent as his employing local agency. Since his employer, the City, is immune from liability, so too is Mr. Goode. See Thorpe v. Danby, 68 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 138, 448 A.2d 676 (1982).

As noted, the plaintiffs also alleged in their complaint that the defendants may be held liable for dam[392]*392ages because their derelictions constituted willful misconduct. With respect to the City and the Center, however, Section 8542(a) (2) limits the liability of a local agency for injuries caused by the negligent acts of the agency or its employees by defining the term negligent acts as not including acts which constitute a crime, actual fraud or willful misconduct. Thus, even if the agency’s acts or those of its employees constituted willful misconduct as charged, the City and the Center remain immune.

Regarding the alleged willful misconduct of Wilson Goode in issuing the directive dispensing with detainee uniforms, Section 8550 of the Act provides an exception to the official immunity conferred on employees of local agencies when “it is judicially determined that the act of the employee caused the injury and that such act constituted a crime, actual fraud, actual malice or willful misconduct. ...” The plaintiffs alleged that Mr. Goode’s action was an act of willful misconduct because it “helped set in motion Opher’s escape, and was a proximate cause of the harm suffered by . . . [them], in that it was a substantial contributing factor in preventing Opher’s capture.” This allegation is merely an assertion that Mr. Goode’s act was a cause of the plaintiffs’ injuries. It does not explain why the act of issuing a directive was misconduct much less misconduct of a willful nature; and it describes no circumstances which would invest that act with that quality. The charges that Mr. Goode was guilty of willful misconduct were fatally vulnerable to a motion for judgment on the pleadings.

We pass now to the difficult question posed by the plaintiffs’ contention that they have pleaded facts which, if accepted by a jury, would permit their receipt of damages from the City and the Center under the exception to immunity provided by Section 8542(b)(3) of the Act which provides:

[393]*393Acts which may impose liability.—The following acts by a local agency or any of its employees may result in the imposition of liability on a local agency:
(3) Real property.—'The care, custody or control of real property in the possession of the local agency, except that the local agency shall not be liable for damages on account of any injury sustained by a person intentionally trespassing on real property in the possession of the local agency. . . .

The plaintiffs, it will be recalled, alleged that the City and the Center had negligently permitted the detention facility to fall into a state of disrepair which resulted in Opher’s escape and his criminal assaults upon them. We have concluded that these averments state a cause of action for which the plaintiffs could recover damages at common law and that they describe acts which may impose liability under the real property exception of Section 8542(b)(3) of the Act.

Section 365 of the Eestatement (Second) of Torts (1965) provides:

A possessor of land is subject to liability to others outside of the land for physical harm caused by the disrepair of a structure ... if the exercise of reasonable care by the possessor—
(a) would have disclosed the disrepair and the unreasonable risk involved therein, and

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Bluebook (online)
492 A.2d 786, 89 Pa. Commw. 388, 1985 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 1033, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mascaro-v-youth-study-center-pacommwct-1985.