County of Butte v. Superior Court

PEEK, J.

This proceeding arises out of an action for damages for the alleged wrongful death of one Robert Over-street while a patient at the Butte County Hospital. The first count of the complaint charged negligence in the treatment of decedent. The second count charged that the county failed to provide adequate facilities, and the third count charged that there was a dangerous and defective condition of public property in that there was no suitable oxygen tent available in the hospital. The county’s demurrer to the complaint was overruled, and it thereupon applied to this court for a writ of prohibition to prevent the respondent court from proceeding any further in said action.

The trial court in overruling the demurrer predicated

[311]

its order entirely upon the premises that: The allegations of the complaint that the hospital is operated by the county as a proprietary business for compensation equal to or in excess of the cost of care provided and that the decedent entered the hospital as a paying patient will sustain a cause of action. Thus the sole question for determination by this court is whether the so-called doctrine of sovereign immunity attaches as a matter of law to the situation presented by the admitted allegations of the complaint. The precise question raised in the present proceeding was before this court in the recent case of

Durst

v.

County of Colusa,

166 Cal.App.2d 623 [333 P.2d 789]. (See also

Griffin

v.

County of Colusa,

44 Cal.App.2d 915 [113 P.2d 270], and

Ingram

v.

County of Glenn,

177 Cal.App.2d 649 [2 Cal.Rptr. 304].) There a judgment entered following an order sustaining a demurrer without leave to amend was sustained on appeal. We find nothing in the record before us in the present proceeding which would in any way alter the rule as set forth in the Durst ease, to which reference is made for a more detailed statement thereof.