Richmond v. Louisville & Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District

572 S.W.2d 601, 1977 Ky. App. LEXIS 930
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedDecember 23, 1977
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 572 S.W.2d 601 (Richmond v. Louisville & Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Richmond v. Louisville & Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District, 572 S.W.2d 601, 1977 Ky. App. LEXIS 930 (Ky. Ct. App. 1977).

Opinions

HOGGE, Judge.

This is an appeal from a summary judgment entered in favor of appellees, defendants below. The lower court found that the plaintiff’s decedent had been contributorily negligent as a matter of law.

Appellees have asserted several other grounds upon which summary judgment could properly have been granted. It is the duty of the reviewing court to consider all the grounds raised, and to affirm the judgment if it should properly have been entered on any of the grounds raised.

On July 18, 1972, an unusually hard rainfall caused a large pool of water to collect in, and overflow a drainage ditch that flowed through the backyards of several houses in the Plantation Hills Subdivision. The ditch terminated at a vertical culvert designed to direct the flow of water through a pipe under Rhett Court to an outlet on the opposite side of the street. However, on the day in question, the amount of water was more than the culvert and pipe could accommodate, and the water flowed over the top of the culvert, through the lawn, and onto the street.

The submerged culvert was not visible from the surface. Some time after the rain, the decedent and other children were riding rafts or tubes on the pool that had collected behind the culvert. While engaged in this activity, the decedent, a fourteen-year-old boy, was sucked through the open culvert into the pipe where he drowned.

The decedent’s father brought this action alleging that the drainage system had been defectively designed and constructed. Upon the defendants’ motion, the trial [603]*603court entered a summary judgment, finding that the decedent had been contributorily negligent as a matter of law.

Under CR 56.03, summary judgment is proper only where there is no issue of material fact. The deposed testimony of experts was directly contradictory on the issue of whether there would have been any visible turbulence that could have alerted the children to the danger at the entrance to the culvert. Therefore, summary judgment was proper only if it may be said that a fourteen-year-old boy is contributorily negligent as a matter of law by playing in a pool of water that had collected.

In the absence of any visible warning that a tremendous suction force was operating within the pool, such a body of water would present little danger to one who, like the decedent, was an experienced swimmer. The law in this respect was set forth in Beam v. Calvert, Ky., 277 S.W.2d 35, 37 (1955). The court stated:

It is fundamental . . . that “ ‘contributory negligence is not imputable to anyone for failing to look out for danger which he has no reasonable cause to apprehend.’ ” It is true one is required to foresee and provide against what usually happens and what is liable to happen, but one is not bound to guard against what is unusual and unlikely, or what, as it is sometimes said, is only remotely probable. [Emphasis ours.]

The court went on to state:

Even where one has exposed himself to a known danger, before he will be found to have been guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law and a recovery denied on such basis, the danger must have been so imminent and obvious that a person of ordinary prudence, under like circumstances and with like knowledge, would not have subjected himself to it. [Emphasis ours.]

Applying the above law to the case at hand, we must ask ourselves the following questions: Did the decedent have reasonable cause to apprehend the danger of being sucked into the culvert? Was this something that usually happens, or was it something that is unusual or unlikely? Was the danger of being sucked into the culvert “imminent and obvious?”

As a matter of common knowledge, the incidence of drowning as a result of being sucked into a culvert is rather low, and would have to be termed unusual rather than usual. Whether the danger was so “imminent and obvious” as to give rise to a reasonable apprehension of the danger, is an issue of fact on which there was contradictory testimony.

Experts, David T. Y. Kao and David K. Blythe, stated in their report that “the enormous magnitude of drag (suction) force will be invisible and will be beyond the recognition of an ordinary person.” Another expert, David L. Daugherty, reported that there would have been turbulence over the entrance to the culvert.

Whether this turbulence existed and whether such turbulence, if any, would have been sufficient to alert an ordinary and prudent fourteen-year-old child to the danger, are questions of fact to be decided by the trier of fact. Thus, we are of the opinion that it was error to grant summary judgment on the basis of the conclusion that the decedent was contributorily negligent as a matter of law.

However, it is well settled that a correct decision will not be disturbed merely because it was based upon incorrect grounds. Haddad v. Louisville Gas and Electric Company, Ky., 449 S.W.2d 916 (1969).

This court is of the opinion that a summary judgment in favor of two of the defendants was proper on grounds other than the plaintiff’s contributory negligence.

First, with respect to appellee, Louisville and Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District, this court is of the opinion that this action is barred by governmental immunity. The law concerning municipal immunity is influx, and recent opinions have not been totally consistent. However, all the cases indicate that sovereign immunity still exists, although limited in scope.

[604]*604In the ease of Gnau v. Louisville and Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District, Ky., 346 S.W.2d 754 (1961), it was held that the Sewer District is an agency of the state, and is cloaked with governmental immunity.

In Haney v. City of Lexington, Ky., 386 S.W.2d 738 (1964), the court stated that it was no longer necessary to consider whether the activity was governmental or proprietary. However, in City of Louisville v. Louisville Seed Company, Ky., 433 S.W.2d 638 (1968), the court stated at page 643:

It has been held in other jurisdictions that a municipality shall be liable in those situations where a private person would be liable. ... A different situation arises when a claimant seeks to hold the city liable for a risk which is inherently part of the carrying on of the function of government, such as its failure to provide fire protection, police protection or, as here, flood protection. We refer only to the ultimate failure and not to the situation where the city is engaging in activities with the citizen on a person to person basis as any other private citizen might do. Where the act affects all members of the general public alike, it would be unreasonable to apply to it the broad principles of tort liability for the reasons previously stated in this opinion.

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Bluebook (online)
572 S.W.2d 601, 1977 Ky. App. LEXIS 930, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/richmond-v-louisville-jefferson-county-metropolitan-sewer-district-kyctapp-1977.