87 Md. 352 | Md. | 1898
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This appeal was taken from a decree of the Circuit Court of Baltimore City. That decree enjoined the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore from placing and keeping on a twenty-acre tract of land owned by the city an unfortunate woman afflicted with leprosy. This land adjoins property belonging to the Fairfield Improvement Company of Baltimore ; and the property of the company is divided into building lots. Many lots have been sold and quite a number of houses have been built in the vicinity of the city’s land. This twenty-acre tract was acquired by the city perhaps half a century ago. It is situated some three miles distant from the city and lies in Anne Arundel County. Up until the year eighteen hundred and eighty-three it was occupied as a place of quarantine against contagious diseases brought toward the city by water; and there were hospitals upon it that were used for the isolation, and treatment of similar diseases originating or found in the city during the prevalence of epidemics. In or about the year just named the Mayor and City Council purchased other property, located near Hawkins’ Point, some sixteen miles distant from the city, and there established a quarantine station,
The ground upon which the relief by injunction was sought is, the apprehended injuiy to the company’s contiguous property by the placing of a person suffering with such a loathsome and horrible disease in close proximity thereto.
The statute law of the State confers upon the Mayor and City Council plenary power to establish, both within and beyond the city’s limits, hospitals and pest-houses for the isolation and treatment of contagious and infectious diseases. Secs. 378, 409, Art 4, Code Public Local Laws. The preservation of the public health renders such legislation highly essential, and the authority of the General Assembly to enact it, in the exercise of the police power of the State, is beyond question or controversy.» Within the scope of the power thus granted the whole authority of the State is included and delegated (Harrison v. Mayor, &c., 1 Gill, 264)1 and, therefore, whatever the State may directly do in furtherance of these objects, the municipality, clothed with a delegated power from the State, may also lawfully perform, though there may be a difference as to the legal consequences resulting from an exercise of the power by the State directly, and those flowing from an exertion of the same power by the municipality. If it be conceded that the State may, in exercising a public power, create a private nuisance with immunity, the immunity grows out of the public necessity and rests upon the State’s sovereignty; but it
Assuming at this point that leprosy is a contagious disease which is a menace to the health of a community; and assuming also that the Mayor and City Council, through its Health Department, were about to utilize this twenty-acre tract of land for the first time for the erection of a pest-
This brings us to an examination of the facts so that we may determine whether they fall within the principles we have been considering.
Leprosy is, and has always been, universally regarded with horror and loathing, and it is conceded to be an incurable disease. In past ages its unfortunate victims, shunned and avoided by their fellowmen, viewed by all with superstitious dread, wandered about the open country naked and starving. Hospitals for the relief of those smitten with the terrible malady seem to have been unknown in antiquity. The sufferers were eventually isolated in villages occupied by them exclusively. With the tide of emigration westward during the decline of the Roman empire, leprosy was spread over Europe, and in the middle ages it prevailed to an alarming extent—its principal ravages dating from the
Inasmuch as the infliction of injury on any individual was not necessarily contemplated in the grant of the power referred to, that is to say, was not a necessary and inevitable consequence of an exercise of the power to maintain a hospital, the right to maintain it at this particular place in the existing circumstances, cannot be put on the ground of explicit or implicit authorization ; and it remains now to inquire whether a prescriptive right is possessed by the city to build or to continue a pest-house in the vicinity of Fair-field. Had the city never abandoned this locality as a place for the confinement and treatment of contagious diseases it is very doubtful whether its right to place this patient there could now be challenged. It is equally doubtful whether the adjoining property would ever have been improved and peopled as it now is, if the old quarantine station, hospitals and pest-houses had not been long ago discontinued. In eighteen hundred and eighty-three, when the new quarantine
The evidence shows, as we have indicated, that the health authorities of the city propose to place this woman in the charge of a laborer and his wife. A contract has been made with them and under it this laborer and his wife agree to care for the patient. They are unskilled people. They possess no authority to restrain the woman from wandering away, and they have no legal right to detain her against her will. They are not officers of the city, nor clothed with any of the powers of the Board of Health. They are simply employed by the city to care for this woman on the city’s property, where no health officer or city official is stationed.. The mere fact that the place of her proposed
There was no error committed in granting the relief prayed and the decree appealed from must be affirmed.
Decree affirmed with costs above and below.