250 Pa. 184 | Pa. | 1915
Opinion by
The health authorities of the City of Philadelphia established a quarantine in a certain district within the city limits in which plaintiff resided, because it was infected with small pox. The authorities proposed to relieve from the restrictions of the quarantine such of the
As little can it be contended that in doing what it did it was exercising a corporate function for the private advantage and benefit of its inhabitants. “The power or even duty on the part of a municipal corporation to make provision for the public health and for the care of the sick and destitute, appertains to it in its public and not corporate, or as it is sometimes called, private capacity.” 2 Dillon on Mun. Corp. (4th Ed.), Section 977. The rule with respect to municipal exemption where a negligence is claimed in cases like the present, is thus stated in the editor’s note to the case of Evans v. The City of Kankakee, 231 Ill. 223, on p. 1190, L. R. A., Vol. XIII, N. S. “A municipality is not liable to respond in damages for injuries occasioned through the neglect, incompetence, or wrongful act of its duly appointed officers in enforcing sanitary regulations to prevent thé spread of contagious diseases, as the act of such officer or board is the exercise of a governmental or legislative function, rather than one arising from the grant of a special power, in the exercise of which the municipality is the same as a legal individual...... The weight-of