Labozetta v. City of Los Angeles

DORAN, J. Plaintiff, John Labozetta, appeals from a judgment in favor of the defendant and respondent, City of Los Angeles, a municipal corporation.

At the trial an objection by respondent to the introduction of any evidence on the ground that the complaint did not state a cause of action was sustained, and a judgment in favor of defendant City of Los Angeles followed. As to the defendant W. C. Lambert, a default judgment having been entered on March 2, 1934, and plaintiff having failed to have the judgment entered within three years after the service of summons, a separate judgment of dismissal was filed on November 17, 1937.

The issue presented is whether the complaint states a cause of action.

The complaint alleged, in substance, that the city was the owner of a building in which it operated boilers, engines and other mechanical appliances for the purpose of supplying heat, steam and power, either in whole or in part, to jail buildings of the city; that one of the boilers was out of use and in need of repairs; that plaintiff’s employer, J. E. Webster, federal receiver for the Southwestern Engineering Corporation, entered into a contract with the city to repair this boiler; that pursuant thereto, plaintiff proceeded to work on the boiler and warned the defendant W. C. Lambert, who was in charge of the boiler room, not to turn on any steam in the boiler as he was going to work inside of it, but that Lambert negligently turned on certain valves in said boiler room which permitted live steam to enter the boiler in which plaintiff was then working, thereby injuring the plaintiff.

The demurrer interposed by the defendant city raised the point that “the injury complained of was in the boiler room of a jail building of the City of Los Angeles and such buildings are used in the administration of governmental affairs of the City of Los Angeles and therefore there is no liability existing against the City of Los Angeles”.

[444]Appellant contends in effect, however, that although a municipality may be acting in a governmental capacity in maintaining jail buildings and the necessary adjuncts thereto, yet with respect to the repair of such structures and appliances it acts in a proprietary capacity upon the theory that the contracts of the city with respect thereto are governed by the law of contracts as they relate to private persons, and that the repair of such structures is a ministerial act.